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DEC. ’43 







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AST— 1A 





CONTENTS 



DECEMBER, 1943 VOL. XXXII, NO. 4 



NOVELETTES 

THE DEBT, by E. Alayne Hull ........ * 

DOST ART, by (heorye 0. Smith . SA 



WE PRINT THE TRUTH, by Anthony Boucher . 12S 



SHORT STORIES 

FRICASSEE IN FOUR DIMENSIONS, 

by P. Sckuyler Miller 55 

THE IRON STANDARD, by Leieia Padgett . % 74 



ARTICLES e 

MASTER CHEMIST, by Arthur MoOonn , . .-101 

EXTRATERRESTRIAL BACTERIA, 

by Willy I.ry 110 



ASTOUNDING 

SCIENCE FICTION 

Reg U. 8. Pit. Off. 



READERS’ DEPARTMENTS 



THE EDITORS PAGE . , 0 

IN TIMES TO COME 32 

THE ANALYTICAL LABORATORY .... 3? 
BRASS TACKS 122 



fBdilor 

JOHN W\ CAMPBELL, JR. 



COVER BY TIMMINS Illustrations by Kramer and Orban 



The editorial contents hire not been publbhed before, ire protected by 
copyright end cannot be reprinted without publisher'* permission. Alt 
stories in this magazine are Action. No actual persons are designated by 
name or character. Any similarity is coincidental. 




Monthly publication Issued by Street & Smith Publications, Incorporated. 
79 Seventh Arenue. New York, 11, N. Y. Allen L. Q rammer. President; 
Gerald H. Smith, Vice President and Treaeurer; Lionry W. Ralston. Vice 
President and Secretary. Copyright, 1943. in U. S. A. and Great Britain 
by Street A Smith Publications. Inc. Reentered as Seoond-tlaaa Matter. 
February 7. 193$. at the Post Office at New York, under Act of Congress 
of March 3, 1879. Subscriptions to Countries In Pan American Union. 
$2.75 per year; elsewhere. $3.25 per year. We cannot accept responsibility 
Tor unsolicited manuscripts or artwork. Any material submitted muet include 
return postage. 

$2.50 Mr Year in U. S. A. Printed in the U. 3. A. 25« per Oepy 



NEXT ISSUE ON SALE DECEMBER 10, 1043 




KTbe exciting experience ofN 
.Margaret Bridges, of the Lon- 
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Imtrrice. reporting for duty just three daysbe- 
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P "Natu rally, the trans- 
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all the cars to safety ... ( 

ass 



O'**' had 'about 40 ambulances and 
other cars stored in a building with a great j 
glass*roof — a ‘virtual greenhouse •when’ 
Jerry’s bombers arrived. When they began! 
Ending our section of Londo n wt s tarted, 
getting the cars oa 




© “I was working alone in my office when the rod# 
Anally did cave in. Only my flashlight could have 
helped me find a way through that deadly, glittering 
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Insects Now 



The modern high-altitude precision 
bombing technique involves a complex 
tie-in between the precision bombsight 
and a precision autopilot. The bom- 
bardier takes control of the plane when 
the bombsight ties in with the autopilot, 
and the bombardier, training his sights 
on the target and holding them there, 
permits an automatic and highly complex 
electro-mechanical nerve-and-muscle sys- 
tem to do the job. It lacks eyes ; the 
bombardier lias to supply those — and, be- 
cause his are the eyes, and they can’t 
be directly, electronically hooked into the 
rest of the mechanism, the bombardier 
must operate controls to keep the target 
in the cross hairs. Save for that — the 
whole system closely resembles a stupen- 
dous stinging insect, guiding itself, con- 
trolling, leveling, directing its own flight, 
sighting its prey, and accurately deliver- 
ing the sting. 

The nerves are copper wires, the gan- 
glia electron tubes and the sense-organ 
gyroscopes, variable capacitors, sensitive 
metal membranes, the muscles — of two 
sorts — are motors. There are the great 
flying muscles, the four main engines, 
and the more delicate trimming muscles, 
the electric motors that control the tail 
surfaces, the wing tabs and ailerons — 
and release the deadly sting. 

An insect appears to have no emotions, 
no thoughts, only reactions. A grasshop- 
per crawling near a praying mantis 
brings forth certain automatic reactions 
— and the grasshopper is caught. In so 
low an animal as a grasshopper, the 
nerve centers aren’t centered — they’re 
scattered, so the grasshopper continues 
reacting, struggling, even though so dam- 
aged as to be unable to live. 

The Flying Fortress has shown that 
same sort of blind, senseless struggling 
to live, to escape, after “life" was im- 
possible for it, and for the same reason. 
With the fuselage cut more than lialf 

6 



through, damaged beyond any hope of 
repair, like an insect, with an insect's 
blind and senseless continuation of hope- 
less struggle, the huge plane came home. 
The crew, of course, came home with it; 
their determination to get home was far 
from blind or senseless — but it would have 
been hopeless if it had not been that the 
plane itself, like some terrible insect, had 
a definite nervous organization, a sensi- 
tive, complex nerve-and-muscle co-ordi- 
nation organized on so distributed a level 
that even that great wound had not de- 
stroyed the co-ordination. 

Time and again, the flying giants have 
been wounded beyond repair — and strug- 
gled home with the mindless determina- 
tion of living things that cannot under- 
stand what death is. 

Already inan has made these blind, 
flying irisect-things of metal and glass 
and vacuum — blind, too stupid to stop 
trying, but awful in the precision of the 
nervous organization that lets them de- 
liver their terrible sting. They must 
borrow their eyes from men, and bor- 
row their will to act or not act. But 
they have a nervous organization that 
lets them fly two thousand miles after 
the crew has left. A nervous organiza- 
tion that lias been known to bring in a 
damaged plane, after the crew had bailed 
out, to a perfect landing. 

In the years after the war. they may 
get eyes — or some more useful type of 
sense organ unlimited by night or fog, 
and a sort of telepathy to keep them in 
“mental” contact with higher minds be- 
hind them, giving them the wilt and pur- 
pose they lack. 

Still they’ll be insects, unknowing, stu- 
pid things, for all their size. Bees to 
gather honey or hornets to sting. 

But — how long till men make a dog- 
thing that knows of its own existence, 
and of its builder, and helps him con- 
sciously? The Editor. 

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 




The Debt 

* 

by £. Mayne Hull 

The Skal Thing had promised Artur Blord one favor — 
but also, for its oum reasons, sworn to destroy him — 



Illustrated by Orban 



METAL! flashed the automatic 
alarms of the spaceship control 
board. METAL! METAL! 

Artur Blord peered into the 
plates, frowning. But there was 
only darkness in the direction the 
red pointers were indicating. Dark- 
ness and a faint sprinkling of stars. 

A quick glance at the estimator 
showed that he was three light-years 
from the Zand sun, and eight from 
the double star, Carox A and B, the 
next nearest of the Ridge Star suns. 
The metal object registered about 



two hundred miles ahead. 

Could be an iron meteorite, Blord 
analyzed. But not very likely. Not 
out here. Besides, his automatics 
were of the advanced Rejector type : 
they could examine any simple 
structure such as a meteorite, adjust 
to its course, and proceed at top 
speed, all without sounding an 
alarm. 

A ship then ? Blord sent a quick 
glance at the power recorder, but 
the instrument showed no sign of 
life. Whatever was out there wasn't 



THE DEBT 



1 




even manufacturing enough energy 
to heat a radiator, let alone a drive 
coil. 

Nothing like being nosey, he 
thought wryly. 

But he knew' it w'as more than 
that. The odd quality in his charac- 
ter that made him curious about 
anything and everything, the quality 
that enabled him to withdraw his 
entire attention from an important 
deal and become absorbed with an 
almost mindless intensity' in some- 
thing seemingly completely irrele- 
vant and immaterial, had made him 
the despair of his associates and the 
wonder of his enemies. 

Nevertheless — and it was Blord's 
greatest secret— it was this very ca- 
pacity to which he attributed the 
enormous success he had had in the 
Ridge Stars. The capacity for pull- 
ing his mind clear of past triumphs 
and future hopes, and savoring the 
moment, the now. 

With a flick of his hand, he 
touched the button that synchro- 
nized his telescopic cameras with the 
red glowing pointers — and pressed 
home the plunger. 

The yellow traces leaped into view 
on the plate. Though tremendously 
slower than light, the distance to the 
still invisible object out there in the 
darkness was now less than a hun- 
dred miles ; and the tracers reached 
it instantly. 

There w'as a flare of yellow in the 
distance. The photographs showed 
a spaceship about a fifth of a mile 
long, not a light burning. 

Blord snapped on his eldophone. 
“Vision call!" he intoned into the 

s 



mouthpiece. “Vision call !” 

No answer. He felt his first chill. 
A derelict. He sent his memory 
tumbling back over the list of space- 
ship accidents that had occurred in 
the Ridge Stars since his own ar- 
rival a few years before. It was a 
scanty list, and besides, all the ships 
had been recovered. 

In no case, he remembered nar- 
row-eyed, had there been any doubt 
about the cause of the disaster ; and 
the pattern had never varied : All 
the men dead, all the women miss- 
ing. 

Suddenly grim, he maneuvered 
his small machine toward the ship. 
As he had expected, the locks hung 
open; the temperature on the ther- 
mometer of his spacesuit registered 
forty below, centigrade, as he moved 
along the corridor from his point of 
entrance, splitting the darkness with 
the glaring lights from his head- 
piece. About two hours, he thought • 
two hours ago. It would take that 
long for the ship’s interior to cool. 

He came to his first dead body. 
It was of a young man, a fine-look- 
ing chap, whose left breast had been 
shot away by what, from the size of 
the wound, could only have been a 
semimobile blaster. 

There were other dead bodies as 
Blord hurried along, all men, some 
of them so horribly mutilated by the 
ravenous energy that had smashed 
their lives, that Blord, hardened as 
he was to death, retched twice. 

Rage, driving deadly anger, al- 
ways made him more, not less, alert. 
And it was this that saved him. 

He was peering into a bedroom 

ASTOUNDING SCI ENUE FICTION 



when it happened, a movement 
glimpsed from the corner of his left 
eye. A movement with enough men- 
ace in it to send him diving for the 
floor. 

The splash of the hand blaster 
sprayed the air where he’ had been. 
Instantly, Blord was on his feet. 
The energy was still corruscating on 
the far wall — when he had the arm 
that wielded the gun — had the 
wielder bent backward over his 
knee, helpless. 

He looked down into a woman’s 
face wet with the tears of panic- 
stricken terror and blue with cold — 

She thawed out in the warming 
environment of Blord’s ship. The 
fear, that had seemed a part of her 
facial structure, scaled off like a 
horror mask removed. Underneath 
was a distinctive face, and a person- 
ality that seemed to recover quickly 
from the shattering blows it had 
been dealt. 

She looked around with alert blue 
eyes. “This is a private space 
yacht?” she asked. 

Blord nodded. But he did not 
take his gaze from her. He was 
puzzled, not by the general picture, 
but by the individual variations. 
The freighter had been a spaceship 
from Earth, loaded with a human 
cargo for the Ridge Stars. Usually, 
the girls and women aboard such 
vessels were big-eyed innocents, 
product of a crimeless planet, where 
the social sciences had been applied 
to the masses with a vengeance. 

This woman didn’t quite fit. She 
had a delicate, youthful, almost a 



girlish face, but after a moment he 
did not hesitate to assess her age at 
thirty. 

The woman seemed to tire ab- 
ruptly of her examination of her 
surroundings. She returned her at- 
tention to him, and said: 

“I’m Ellen Reith. I have a lot 
of other names, but I’m divorced 
from three of them, and the owner 
of the fourth is probably wondering 
where his bride is.” 

She smiled wanly, went on: “I 
was born with more money than 
there used to be on Earth five thou- 
sand years ago. In spite of a swarm 
of tutors and mentors, I grew up 
wild, married the first time at sev- 
enteen, and three times since then. 
I suddenly realized what a mess I’d 
made, and I came out here to the 
frontiers to make a new start. I 
intend to marry a farmer, have five 
kids, and forget there ever was 
such a person as Mrs. Gilmour- 
Morgan-Davis-Castlefield.” 

The confession, Blord realized, 
was one that would not have been 
made by a woman in full control of 
herself. He had better make a point 
of reassuring her afterward that he 
had a short memory about some 
things. The woman was speaking 
again, more wearily now ; the excite- 
ment of the rescue was beginning to 
wear off ; she said in a tired voice : 
“I fired at you because I thought 
they had come back.” She shud- 
dered, finished: “I suppose you 

want to know what happened?” 
Blord shook his head grimly. “I 
know what happened. Now. you 
just go to sleep. We can talk later.” 

• 



THE DEBT 



“You know what happened !’’ 
Her blue eyes were wide. “Then 
you know who’s responsible, and 
where the other women were taken." 

Blord nodded. 

Ellen Reith stared at him. 
“Where?” 

“I'll tell you all about it later. 
You must get some sleep now.” 

“Where?” 

Blord sighed. He could appre- 
ciate the fascination the fate she had 
escaped would have on her mind. 
When he had told her, she lay very 
quiet ; her body seemed taut under 
the blanket that he had placed over 
her. She whispered finally : 

“You mean this Skal Thing kid- 
naps girls for its Castle of Pleasure, 
and nobody’s doing anything about 
it?” 

Her voice had a higher pitch to 
it, as she went on: “You’ve re- 

ported what’s happened, haven’t 
you ?’’ 

Blord stared at her thoughtfully. 
“Well, no, not exactly; not yet.” 

“But,” she gasped urgently, 
“there may be others aboard, alive. 
And perhaps the ship with the 
women can be intercepted. They — ” 

She seemed to realize that her 
words were hardly touching him. 
With a convulsive effort, she pulled' 
herself back out of hysteria, and said 
sharply : 

“What’s wrong with doing some- 
thing? What’s wrong with trying 
to save others who are aboard?" 

“Go to sleep!” said Blord. He 
stood up, and walked out of the lit- 
tle room, back to the control board. 

He was convinced his examina- 

10 



tion of the ravaged freighter had 
been thorough ; not a soul remained 
alive aboard it. 

He had made a point of leaving 
everything exactly as he found it; 
the bodies in their sprawled posi- 
tions, the air locks open. 

Beyond doubt it had been a job 
done with the assistance of men who 
had come with the freighter all the 
way from Earth. An inside job 
carried out with clocklike precision 
at a set rendezvous by the gangs of 
human scum employed by that sar- 
donic and ancient beast, the Skal 
Thing, who lived in the depths of 
the Castle of Pleasure on the long- 
dead planet of Delfi I. 

The Skal Thing had not so long 
ago promised him a favor. But 
Blord knew with utter certainty 
that it would never grant any favor 
that endangered its own henchmen. 

They were now endangered. Be- 
cause of the physical examinations 
regulating people who emigrated to 
the stars, they’d have to be aboard 
undisguised. By this time they 
knew there was a woman missing. 
A woman who must have seen some 
of the gang aboard the freighter. 

A woman, accordingly, who 
would be mercilessly exterminated 
— unless he took every conceivable 
counteraction, fast. 

He put his calls through. But it 
was two hours before his eldophone 
brred softly. The first reply was 
from his business manager, Magrus- 
son. The plump man spoke softly, 
as if the subject matter had a sub- 
duing effect on him : 

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE FICTION 



“The invisible ship will meet you 
five hours from now. The pilot will 
be Nicer, who will make the ex- 
change above the jungle island of 
Carox A II, and will then proceed 
here, where he will be conditioned 
to believe that he was the one who 
actually took your ship out from 
Zand." 

"Hm-m-m.” Blord nodded doubt- 
fully. "I guess that’s the best we 
can do. I don't know just how such 
a conditioning would hold up if he 
were taken before the Skal Thing. 
I have an idea the Thing can go 
deeper into minds than any covering 
up we can do. 

“It is important to remember, 
however, that it may take no part 
in the game at all. I have an idea 
it holds itself very aloof from its 
hirelings. I’m simply taking no un- 
necessary chances. If you think of 
any further precautions on your 
own, let me know. Good-by.” 

The second call came a minute 
later. A'woman’s face flashed onto 
the plate. 

“Artur,” she said swiftly, “I went 
in and talked to the chief of Secret 
Police as you suggested. I didn't 
tell him, of course, why I wanted 
the information. I pretended that I 
had just come across a piece about 
it. Well, he just opened right up.” 

“Good girl !” 

The woman smiled with pleasure 
at the praise, then grew more seri- 
ous. “I’m afraid you’re out of luck 
if you're really planning to tackle 
the Skal Thing, unless you can get 
the beast to kill itself as a special 
favor to you and the world.” 



“Maybe you’ve got something 
there,” Blord laughed softly. “It 
owes me a favor. But go on. What’s 
wrong?” 

“Everything! You wanted to 
know the details of the various at- 
tacks made on the Castle of Pleas- 
ure by the Ridge Star governments. 
Well, here they are: 

“The castle is made of a metal, 
or if a force structure, that doesn’t 
even start to fuse when atomic en- 
ergy is directed against it. As you 
know, there were other ancient 
buildings at one time on Delfi I, 
relics of a civilization of long-dead 
Skal Things. They were all de- 
stroyed rather suddenly soon after 
human beings came to Delfi II. 
But not before some loose pieces had 
been taken to Earth for study. 

“Nobody knows what the metal 
is. It’s the old trouble : Age hard- 
ening of alloys using catalysts. Un- 
less you know the catalytic agent 
and the environment, method and 
period of hardening, you can study 
the finished metal until your mind 
congeals without learning its secrets. 

“The metal’s electronic pattern is 
known ; I’ll send you the formula to 
you know where; and that’s all 
about that. But here’s something 
very special and' private: 

"Ninety-six police warships were 
destroyed in the three attacks made 
on the Castle of Pleasure. That’s 
never been revealed publicly. They 
were destroyed by a bright-green 
ray, the electronic structure of 
which was similar in every detail to 
that of the metal. Figure that one 
out. 



THE DEBT 



11 



“Finally, the main hide-outs of 
the human gangs that work for the 
Thing are dead dark secrets. There 
are so many suns, so many unex- 
plored planets that even looking for 
hideaways is hopeless. But its ob- 
vious that they must have supply 
centers in big cities. Two places 
are under strong suspicion. One of 
these is the great Midnight Club in 
the city Negor on Fasser III ; the 
other — ” 

“Just a minute,” Blord ait in. 
“I’ll get those names on a wire.” 
When he had them, his tone 
changed. “How’s everything with 
you. Medon?” 

The woman smiled brilliantly. 
“Wonderful. I have another baby, 
a lovely boy. But I mustn't stay 
talking here. I’ll be seeing you, Ar- 
tur. Good-by.” 

The plate wait dark, Blord 
turned, then stopped, and stared 
thoughtfully at Ellai Reith. She 
was sitting in a chair ten feet away, 
and she looked as if she had been 
there for several minutes at least. 

Her short sleep had had a revivi- 
fying effect ; and somewhere she had 
found time to do neat things to her 
brown-gold hair. Her eyes sparkled. 
Slim and self-possessed, she sat ey- 
ing him, a faint smile on her deli- 
cate. aristocratic face. The smile 
became a shadow. ' 

“I heard it all, except part of the 
man’s words, enough to gather that 
I'm in danger. Is that right?” 

She didn’t look as if she was 
afraid. Two hours before she had 
seemed thirty; now — 

Blord found himself gazing at her 



admiringly. He liked mature women 
who could look eighteen under 
stress. And, as he had never in- 
tended to keep her in the dark, he 
explained the situation briefly. 

When he had finished, the woman 
was silent for a long moment. Fi- 
nally, with utter irrelevance, she 
said : 

“Who is she?" She waved at the 
dark eldo-plate. 

Blord shook his head. He stood 
up and stared down at her, a sav- 
age smile crinkling his lips. 

“Think of her,” he said slowly, 
resonantly, “as one whose informa- 
tion might save your life IF vve can 
think of some way to use it.” 

For a long time after that, the si- 
lence was complete. 

The transfer to the invisible ship 
took place in midair over the rest- 
less gray waters of an inland sea. 
The pilot, Nicer, neither saw nor 
suspected the presence of a woman. 

Clothed in a roomy invisibility 
suit, she slipped aboard the larger, 
more luxurious vessel while Blord 
talked rapidly to the pilot. Then 
he, too, walked aboard ; instantly, 
the two ships withdrew from their 
lonely rendezvous, and plunged in 
opposite directions toward distant 
suns. 

After an hour, Ellen Reith had 
still not appeared from her apart- 
ment, which she had found without 
assistance. She probably needed 
more sleep. 

It was time he had some turn self. 

Blord set the automatics, and con- 
nected the alarms to his bedroom. 



12 



ASTOUNDING SCIENCE FICTION 



When lie woke up eight hours later, 
the ship was still hurtling toward its 
remote objective. 

Ellen Reith’s door remained 
closed. But somebody had been in 
the kitchen, and neglected to put the 
dishes in the Beldex. Blord smiled, 
as the possibility struck him that she 
did not even know how to operate 
an automatic dish-washing machine. 

It was a pretty tribute to civili- 
zation. 

He ate thoughtfully, then exam- 
ined the wire for messages. But 
there was nothing. He busied him- 
self with some papers that Magrus- 
son had thoughtfully piled high in a 
case labeled URGENT BUSI- 
NESS. 

Blord smiled over the documents. 
Magrusson kept papers to be signed 
strategically spread throughout the 
Ridge Stars; there were special of- 
fices that, under radio supervision, 
did nothing but type original copies. 
As soon as any one of these was 
signed, all the other copies were de- 
stroyed, wherever they might be. 
The development of the system that 
fitted so beautifully in with his own 
casual character still made Blord 
glow with appreciation. 

He sat down, and applied himself 
for five straight hours. He was 
aware once that the woman came 
out, and went to the kitchen, then 
disappeared into her suite without a 
word. 

Finally weary himself, Blord 
dumped the still enormous pile of 
unsigned and unread documents into 

THE DEBT 



their case, and then put them out of 
his mind. 

He ate his second meal, and there 
was still nothing on the wire. He 
took a sleeping tablet and went to 
bed. This time, when he awoke, 
there were three messages on the 
wire, all from Magrusson. Blord 
read them with the exhilarating 
consciousness that the period of in- 
action was about to end. 

The first message read : 

A special high-powered, heavily ar- 
mored ship visited the derelict after nine- 
teen hours. Fought running battle with 
three police ships, but finally escaped un- 
scathed. 

The second message said : 

The police have issued a bulletin on the 
ravaged freighter Crescent Moon, stating 
that nine hundred seventy-four bodies 
were found, one of them that of a woman, 
who has been identified as Mrs. Gilmour- 
Morgan-Davis-Castlefield, heiress to the 
Reith multibillion fortune. The former 
Miss Reith was described as apparently 
having hid herself during the attack, but 
had afterward been frozen to death, as 
she evidently did not know how to close 
the air locks which had been left open by 
the marauders. 

The third message said : 

Nothing yet. 

It didn’t make sense until a 
thought struck him, and he glanced 
at the time of receipt registered on 
each message. 

Blord smiled. The young lady 
might not be able to operate an au- 
tomatic dish-washing machine, but 
she did know about wires. The only 
thing was she should have made a 
point of putting them back in proper 
time sequence. 

13 



A sound intruded upon his amuse- 
ment. Behind him, Ellen Reith 
said in an intense voice: 

“But who was the dead woman ?" 

Blord turned and stared at her. 
She had selected a very simple dark 
dress from the wardrobe which one 
of Magrusson’s fantastically priced 
couturiers had supplied on the 
basis of eldophoned measurements; 
but the simpleness was an illusion 
of style. 

Her cheeks glowed with skillfully 
applied color. Her lips were full 
and red, and parted to speak again. 
Before she could utter the words, 
however, Blord shrugged, said: 

“It was really very simple. I 
have had need of bodies before ; and 
accordingly, basic arrangements 
were actually made long ago with a 
big chain of undertakers. It was 
only a matter of finding among the 
tens of thousands of dead a body 
that approximated yours. Make-up 
experts did the rest. The body was 
rushed out to the Crescent Moon by 
a ship whose ownership cannot pos- 
sibly be traced back to me. The pi- 
lot returned to where he came from, 
secretly informed the police, had all 
memory of the episode conditioned 
out of him ; and he is now on a liner 
Earthbound for a year’s holidav. 
He—’’ 

He stopped — stopped because the 
woman was gazing at him with a 
strange expression. 

“What’s the matter?” Blord 
asked. 

“You !” she breathed. “What 
kind of a man are you? You’ve 
thought of everything, everything. 

14 



It's like a dream. It all happened 
so swiftly, yet you did everything 
instantaneously, and with such an 
exact skill that — ” 

She shook her head wonderingly, 
then slowly the intensity faded, she 
said anxiously : 

“I’m safe now, am I?” 

“Only if the Skal Thing has not 
been informed. However,” lie went 
on coolly, “I think we are now ready 
for the attack.” 

“Attack?” 

He nodded ; said ferociously : 
“You don't think I'm going to let 
that bloody gang continue to oper- 
ate unscathed?” He frowned. 
“What I really need against the 
Skal Thing is one of my hunches, 
but, until then, the gang is my meat. 
Now, listen, how much courage 
have you got ?” 

The Midnight Club occupied the 
peak of a high hill overlooking the 
city Negor, the vast city Ncgor, of 
Fasser III. 

Blord edged the car toward the 
curb, motioned with his hand. 

“Six years ago I stood on this 
hill and gazed down on a plain to- 
ward the dark glittering sea of Kal- 
lidee. A few tents, a couple of 
spaceships squatting on the ground 
unloading machinery, and the tiny 
figures of several thousand men 
looking like little scurrying rats — 
that was what I saw.” 

He leaned back, then smiled at 
Ellen Reith. “The city hasn’t been 
built quite as I pictured it then. 
But the difference is niv own fault. 
I have a horrible trait of character 



ASTOUNDING SCIENCE FICTION 




which prevents me from taking an 
interest in the details of an opera- 
tion once it’s started. The result is 
other men with other dreams wove 
their patterns. But that’s the glory 
of life in the Ridge Stars. Tens of 
millions of men burning with master 
designs for a vast future surge out 
here — and draw their pictures on 
the the living canvas of the un- 
bounded universe.” 




The woman’s eyes were strange. 
“And the greatest painter of all is 
Artur Blord.” She spoke softly, 
but her voice was resonant as she 
went on : “I’ve been your secretary 
for three days, and I’m only just 
beginning to realize how tremen- 
dous is the work you’re doing.” 

She broke off: “That woman 

who gave you all that information 
about the attacks on the Skal Thing 
— she’s one of your wives, isn’t she? 
That child she mentioned was yours, 
wasn’t he?” 

Blord stared at her. “Are you 
crazy?” he said. 

She shook her head; her eyes 
were pools of intense blue in the dim 
light from the instrument board. 

“You can’t fool me. And you’ve 
got more women out there, haven’t 
you, who’d rather share one hun- 
dredth part of your life than have 



THE DEBT 



IS 




the full-time attention of a whole 
score of lesser men? 

"Wait!’’ She cut him off as he 
attempted to speak. “Don’t deny 
it. You don't have to, not with me. 
Because it’s right. You know in 
your heart and in your mind that 
those women have made no mis- 
take. The universe is too big, too 
complicated, for little men’s chil- 
dren. Each succeeding generation 
has to be quicker-minded, bolder, 
stronger. And the cycle must go 
on faster and faster, as man expands 
in his intricate fashion into ten bil- 
lion other galaxies. 

“Life can't wait for old morali- 
ties ; and the mothers of the race 
have been the first to realize it. 
They come out here, innocent, stiff- 
minded but brave; and in a single 
leap of comprehension realize their 
destiny.’’ 

Blord was laughing gently. “All 
this,” he marveled, “from a young 
lady who is going to marry a farmer 
and have ten kids.” 

Her laughter echoed his, but there 
was a note of scorn in it. “What a 
fool I was! For years I was like a 
moth, singeing myself in a fire I 
didn't understand, becoming more 
bewildered every time I got burned. 
A dozen times I thought of commit- 
ting suicide, which only goes to 
show how tremendous were the 
forces of which I was so dimly 
aware. But now — ” 

She caught his arm. “Artur 
Blord,” she said in a curious frenzy, 
“you must save me. I couldn’t bear 
to die now. There’s so much to do, 
so many things to experience.” 

16 



Blord reached forward and placed 
his finger on her lips. “Careful !” 
he admonished. “That's the wrong 
attitude. Fear of death is the most 
dangerous of all phobias out here. 
One thing you’ve got to be prepared 
for is to die any minute. In fact — ” 

He drew back, stared at her 
coolly. “You’ve agreed to visit the 
Midnight Club with me. In spite 
of the fact that we’re both disguised, 
the danger is great enough to place 
considerable strain on the nerves of 
anyone unaccustomed to such situa- 
tions. Accordingly, unless you can 
convince me that — ” 

Her laughter, amused, unstrained, 
gently mocking, rippled across his 
words, and ended as she said ear- 
nestly : 

“I wasn’t thinking about myself. 
You must believe that. It's impor- 
tant that I live because . . . because 
of the things I must do. I don’t 
know just how to describe that, 
but—” 

Blord was shaking his head. 
“Never mind,” he said gently. 
“Those things can’t be described. 
You’ve told me what I want to 
know. Let's go. Remember, my 
name is Chris Delton, and you’re 
Rita Kelly.” 

Soundlessly, the long car glided 
forward. A moment later, a club 
attendant was opening the door. 
The attendant climbed into the car, 
and drove it toward a parking place. 
Neither Blord nor the woman so 
much as glanced back. 

One by one the glittering doors 
opened before them, and closed be- 
hind them. In three minutes they 



ASTOUNDING SC I E NO E- F ICT I ON 



were deep into the interior of the 
enormous mass of buildings that 
was the Midnight Club. 

“I’m becoming bewildered,” Ellen 
Reith whispered after an hour. 
“I’ve played games I didn’t know 
existed, and I’ve made eight hun- 
dred thousand stellors. It’s silly for 
me to be excited about such a small 
sum, but I can’t get used to the idea 
of so much freedom. On Earth they 
don’t—” 

She broke off, confessed : “I feel 
like a child in a brand-new world, 
and in about two seconds I’m going 
to wake up.” 

Blord laughed. “Earth is trying 
to keep its population. Therefore, 
practically everything is illegal ; 
there are no easy ways to make 
money. And while people are paid 
good wages, there's a clever method 
of making them spend their earn- 
ings so that only a small percentage 
of them can ever manage to break 
away. 

“Gambling is bad only when los- 
ing might mean poverty or hunger. 
But that doesn’t apply in this uni- 
verse of high wages, cheap food and 
so many jobs that employers and 
would-be employers nearly go crazy 
outbidding each other for the serv- 
ices of newcomers. 

“The human race has always had 
a sound emotional instinct as to 
what pleasures they w'ant. For the 
first time in history the lust to build, 
to create and to enjoy can be expe- 
rienced simultaneously, not by a few 
privileged, but by all.” 



“Then you approve of this club 
here?” Her eyes were wide. 

Blord stared at her in surprise. 
“Why, of course.” He smiled. 
“Don’t forget you can lose that eight 
hundred thousand as quickly as you 
won it.” 

“I don’t mean that. I mean the 
gang behind this club. Surely, you 
don’t — ” 

Blord’s gaze darkened. He 
frowned at her, said sharply : “Are 
you comparing the crimes of the 
Skal Thing and its henchmen with 
the will of a human being to enjoy 
himself where he pleases after his 
day’s work is done? The former I 
shall destroy without mercy ; the 
latter — well, when he is having a 
good time, so is God. That’s my re- 
ligion.” 

He stopped. He saw that the 
woman’s eyes were intent on some- 
thing behind him. 

“That man!” she hissed. “The 
one who’s talking to the group — he 
was aboard.” 

Blord said: “Turn back to your 
drink. Your eyes are too fixed and 
there’s horror in them. Relax !” 

She looked at him, and managed 
a wan smile. “Sorry,” she said ; 
then : “But hadn’t you better get a 
look at him, so you won’t forget his 
face?” 

Blord shook his head, but he 
made no answer. And he sighed 
inwardly. He had made Ellen 
Reith his secretary because she had 
to be around anyway, and because 
she insisted on being useful. But it 
was obvious that she had yet to 
learn not to offer advice as to what 



THE DEBT 



17 



he ought to do — long after he had 
done it. 

Blord smiled wryly. But basi- 
cally he was not ashamed of the 
conceit behind that thought. She 
should have remembered that she 
had submitted herself to hypnotism. 
True, he had deliberately refrained 
from showing her the hypnotically 
remembered composite drawings 
she had made of the faces of several 
score of carefully selected men — 
carefully selected on the basis of her 
mental reaction to them, the instinc- 
tive hostility of that deeper brain 
that could read character at a glance 
or word. But he had withheld them 
from her for a purpose. 

One of the drawings had been of 
the man whom she had now identi- 
fied. A man whom Blord had been 
following for thirty minutes with- 
out pointing him out, in order that 
her final identification be untinged 
by suggestion of any kind. 

He saw that the woman was star- 
ing at him keenly. She said 
quickly: “I’ve said something 

wrong? Is it possible that I’ve been 
moving along quite ignorantly into 
the very center of one of your intri- 
cate plots ?” 

Blord smiled. “It's possible," he 
admitted. “Now, here’s what you 
do!” He explained briefly. “I ad- 
mit this is pretty short notice, and 
it might put you in the deadliest 
danger. But if this fellow's mind 
has been conditioned at all, we’ve 
got to knock his brains loose, and 
freeze him while he’s off his mental 
balance. As for not telling you, I 

18 



didn’t want to worry you in ad- 
vance.” 

She was as white as a sheet, but 
after a moment she mustered a 
shaky smile. 

“No wonder you can’t keep a sec- 
retary — as a secretary. You drive 
them as hard as you drive your- 
self.” 

She shook herself, said: “Never 
mind. Start your fireworks. I’ll 
take off my mask the moment you 
reach him.” 

Blord stood up. “That's the 
spirit.” 

Hqr smile mocked him as he 
started to turn. She said : “If this 
is what it takes to become a mem- 
ber of that harem of yours. I intend 
to pass with double- A honors." 

“Don’t be an idiot,” said Blord 
rudely. 

And walked off. 

Out of the corner of his eye, 
Blord saw a dozen of his men casu- 
ally stroll into position, encircling 
the table where Ellen Reith re- 
mained. Others, including some of 
his women agents, formed in little 
groups outside the inner circle, cre- 
ating a second and stronger ring of 
defense around her. 

It was the most he could do for 
her. He put her out of his mind. 

The man she had identified leaned 
confidently against the crystal bar, 
talking animatedly to five of Blord’s 
agents. As Blord came up, the fel- 
low skillfully included him in the 
conversation : 

“I was just telling these gentle- 
men,” he confided, “about my recent 

ASTOUNDING SCIBNCK FICTION 



visit to the Castle of Pleasure. The 
Skal Thing has a brand-new bunch 
of women up there. It’s a little ex- 
pensive, but you’ll never regret a 
single stellor of it — ” 

It was at that point that Blord 
stepped up to the panderer, and said 
in an undertone : 

“Cut it, fellow ! And take a look 
at the woman at that table over 
there. The boss wants to know 
whether you know her.” 

“Huh!" ejaculated the man. 
“You’re not one of u — ” 

He stopped. Involuntarily, he 
turned to look. The color drained 
from his cheeks. 

“But she’s dead !” he gasped. 
“The police said — ’’ 

He stopped again. But this time 
it was involuntary, as Blord pressed 
the activator of a very curious in- 
strument. An instrument which, 
when synchronized with its re- 
corder, strapped to the body of 
Blord’s assistant, who had taken up 
a position behind the victim, 
smashed the intervening brain in 
such a manner as to shatter its 
moral, intellectual and emotional 
continuity. 

The energy poured up a million 
nerve paths, and, like a solvent, 
loosened thoughts, shocked through 
areas of resistance and, with par- 
ticular violence, flushed everything 
that connected with the idea forms 
that had been in the mind at the 
moment it was applied. 

Its effect was cumulative, and the 
peak body of confession would not 
begin to pour forth until some two 

THE DEBT 



hours after the dose of energy was 
taken. 

After that its potency declined 
rapidly. Though basically harmless, 
its manufacture was a government 
monopoly, and its private use pro- 
hibited under severe penalty. 

It was one of the hundreds of ex- 
pensive devices Blord had gathered 
into what, for want of a better name, 
he called his co-ordination depart- 
ment. 

With a bland conviction Blord 
believed that, while there were mil- 
lions of people who knew how one 
or a few of the thousands of de- 
vices worked, only he, who knew 
little of the details of construction, 
had ever co-ordinated so many in- 
ventions to a single pattern of action 
evolving out of one brain. 

Blord said now, coolly: “Let’s 

go out into the garden, and you can 
tell me the details !” 

A brain that could only acquiesce 
to every suggestion had no resist- 
ance to that. But Blord had to hold 
the man’s elbow to keep him from 
staggering like a drunken man. 

They reached the terrace, and 
walked to the dark end of the gar- 
den below, where the first of the two 
invisible ships waited. It rose the 
moment Blord and his prisoner en- 
tered. 

Blord verified that the second 
ship was on the point of landing in 
the garden, then forgot about it. 
Two hours later, he emerged, smil- 
ing with satisfaction, from the lab. 

“So,” he said to Doc Gregg, “the 
master minds hold a meeting every 
two months in the Midnight Club, 

16 



and the next meeting is scheduled 
for two weeks from tonight.” 

.He finished: “Where’s Miss 

Reith? I want to give some dicta- 
tion.” 

“Hasn’t come in yet.” 

"When she comes,” Blord began, 
“tell her — ” 

His • voice trickled into silence. 
He had been lowering himself into 
the chair before his desk. Now, he 
straightened. 

“WHAT?” he yelled. 

The eldophone on his desk flick- 
ered with the blue light of an inter- 
stellar call. Blord waved vaguely 
at the thing. 

“Answer it,” he muttered. He 
walked over to a window, whispered 
huskily : “I ought to be shot, stack- 
ing myself against the Skal Thing.” 

He found himself listening with 
puzzled attention to what Doc Gregg 
was saying into the eldophone ; then, 
with a swift movement, he walked 
over and took the instrument from 
Doc’s extended hand. Savagely, he 
said into the mouthpiece: 

"You can’t fool me. The Skal 
Thing is incapable of human 
speech.” 

A second later, he knew better. 

There was a chuckle from the ear- 
phone that brought a grisly chill 
tingling down his spine. The crazy 
part was that the sound was exactly 
similar to the mind-chuckle that he 
had experienced on the one occasion 
that the monstrous scale-armored 
lizard had peered into his brain. 

The chuckle ended, and a ghastly- 
toned voice said : 

20 



"For such calls as this, Artur 
Blord, I use an instrument which 
translates thoughts into language. 
After all, there is a very compact, 
similar instrument in existence in 
your head. Would you doubt that 
I am incapable of solving the com- 
paratively simple mechanical prob- 
lems involved ?” 

He doubted nothing. The whole 
thing was as clear as clear could be. 
The question that remained was : 
How had the Skal Thing found 
out ? And why was it calling now ? 

Blord said jerkily: “Get to the 
point.” 

The chilling chuckle came again : 
“Is it possible, Mr. Blord, that my 
high regard for you is not recipro- 
cated? I have watched with admi- 
ration your remarkable efforts to 
conceal the fact that Ellen Reith was 
alive. I can say frankly and hon- 
estly that I couldn’t have done bet- 
ter myself under similar circum- 
stances.” 

“Look!” Blord began, but the 
voice w r ent on insistently, ignoring 
the interruption: 

“To begin with, my investigation 
was of a routine nature. I was in- 
terested in the identity of all ships 
and pilots known to be within sev- 
eral star distances of the derelict. 
I was interested in discovering how 
the fingerprints of the dead wom- 
an’s body compared with those of 
Ellen Reith. Naturally, these and 
similar inquiries took a little time, 
but not too long, not too long, Mr. 
Blord. 

“I refused, as you would no doubt 
have done in my position, to accept 

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 



the apparent picture as evidence, 
and so by the end of the third side- 
real day — ” 

Blord said in a flat voice : “What 
have you done with her and my 
agents? What do you want?” 

The answer was a soft blare of 
hideous amusement, then the inhu- 
man voice came again: 

“How impatient we are! But 
very well, I will be brief. My vic- 
tory, as you must realize, is sharply 
qualified. I am in the very peculiar 
position of having to maintain my 
prestige among a curious type of 
human being. The rascals who serve 
me must believe that I am capable 
of protecting them under all circum- 
stances, collectively and individu- 
ally. Otherwise, my organization 
might disintegrate. 

“It was not a part of my plan that 
you remove one of my active hench- 
men from the Midnight Club, and 
I am still puzzled as to how you ac- 
tually did it. 

“You must release this man at 
once.” 

“And?” 

“I will in return release Miss 
Reith and your agents.” 

Blord waited. After a moment 
there was still silence. A faint per- 
spiration moistened his lean face. 
He licked his lips. 

“Is that all?” he asked finally. 
“Where’s the catch ?” 

“No catch.” 

Blord exploded in a blank amaze- 
ment: “You’re going to release 

some fifty men and women and a 
spaceship in return for one cheap 
Jack?” 



“You have my word of honor.” 

Blord parted his lips, then closed 
them again. Quite instinctively Tiis 
fingers jiggled the eldoplate ad- 
juster, but the darkness of the plate 
merely shifted like a black cloud at 
night; no visualization came. A 
thought struck finally into his other- 
wise blank brain. He said : 

“I get it. That favor you prom- 
ised to do for me a few months ago. 
This is it.” 

“M-i-s-t-e-r Blord !” There was 
anger and reproach in the Skal's 
tone. “Do you really believe that I 
would stoop to kidnaping your 
friends, and then releasing them in 
order to cancel a promise I made 
you ?” 

The voice grew strangely, metal- 
lically menacing : “I am depending 
entirely upon your unsurpassable 
sense of logic.” 

At last Blord accepted. The as- 
tounding thing was that he had held 
out so long, sitting here like a log of 
wood, his mind in a plantlike state. 

Suddenly, it was as obvious as 
the difference between night and 
day. The Skal Thing was like this. 
Human measuring sticks didn’t ap- 
ply to it. A slimy fifty-foot lizard 
that murdered men and made white 
slaves of women was no more a 
criminal than a man who killed or 
bred lizards. 

Except that the thing must be ex- 
terminated like some poisonous 
snake. 

“But now,” the Skal was rasping, 
“enough of this. You have until to- 
morrow noon to make up your mind. 
Good-by, my admirable friend. You 



THE DEBT 



31 




have not been very bright tonight, 
but I imagine the lady had some- 
thing to do with that. She will 
make you an ideal secretary.” 

There was a gross chuckle fol- 
lowed by a click. 

The council of war was not going 
very well. Blord sat in the chair 
before his desk, sunk in gloom. Ma- 
grusson, portly, thick-cheeked, 
newly arrived from Delfi II, occu- 
pied the enormous easy-chair to 
Blord’s left. A slim yet powerful- 
looking young man with cold, 

22 



thoughtful gray eyes stood chain 
smoking, back pressed against the 
jamb of the door facing Blord. Doc 
Gregg lounged on the window sill. 

From the secretary’s chair at 
Blord's right, Ellen Reith said: 
“But what did the Skal mean 
about depending on your sense of 
logic ?” 

Blord did not answer, nor did 
anyone else break the silence that 
slid in hard upon her words. He 
felt no annoyance at a question that 
had so obvious an answer. In fact — 
After his own exhibition of men- 

ASTOTJNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 




ta! aridity while the Skal was talk- 
ing the night before, it might be a 
good idea to adjust his entire con- 
ception of stupidity. 

He smiled bleakly, then he noted, 
pleased, that she seemed not the 
least put out by the fact that she had 
been snubbed. She sat slim, chic, 
self-possessed, and she went on 
after a moment coolly : 

“If the Skal Thing is going to be 
foolish enough to release fifty peo- 
ple in exchange for one, that is its 
weakness, not ours. We must sim- 
ply take care to enter no more of its 
strongholds, and carry on as if noth- 
ing has intervened. After all, it 
only acts through men, who cannot 
possibly be as clever as Mr. Blord.” 

Blord directed a wan grin in her 
direction. “The brain we’re fight- 
ing is not human. Frankly, I can- 
not imagine how to outthink the 
Skal Thing that won't believe any- 
thing until it has applied its own 
brand of tensor logic.” 

He groaned : “It’s the old story. 
I swore when I first came out to the 
Ridge Stars that I wouldn’t enter 
the reforming business; yet here 
I’ve been trying to lift the universe 
on my shoulders. 

“Every day a million major 
crimes are committed in the Ridge 
Stars. For an individual to do any- 
thing about that is like trying to 
visit one millionth of the suns in the 
galaxy during a lifetime. On top of 
that, Magrusson will tell you that 
I’m losing ten million or more stel- 
lors every day I ignore my own 
business.” 

He finished with a rush of gloom. 



“And I've got to get myself mixed 
up with the impregnable, undefeat- 
able Skal.” 

The plump man was nodding. 
“Now, you’re talking sense, boss. 
Look, I’ve brought along a shipload 
of important documents. It’ll take 
you a month to read them, let alone 
O. K. them. How about forgetting 
this Skal business, and starting in 
on them — now?” 

Blord said : “What do vou think, 
Cantlin?” 

The lean, gray-eyed man 
shrugged. “I got a shock when you 
first told me what we were up 
against.” 

He fell silent ; and Blord turned, 
said; “And you. Miss Reith?” 

She was, he saw, frowning. She 
glanced up and stared at him with 
puzzled, appraising eyes. She said 
slowly : 

“I’d still like to know what the 
Skal meant about your sense of 
logic.” 

“It was warning me," Blord ex- 
plained quietly, “not to bother its 
men again until I had eliminated it. 
In other words, it challenged me 
directly, a challenge which it confi- 
dently believes I will not dare ac- 
cept.” 

Her gaze studied him the whole 
while he spoke; when he had fin- 
ished, she smiled enigmatically, and 
said simply : 

“Give it up !” 

“Done!” said Blord. He leaped 
to his feet. “Cantlin !” 

The iron-faced young man 
straightened with a casual move- 
ment. Blord rattled on : 



THH DKItT 



23 



"Pay all your agents one thousand 
stellors bonus, and yourself twenty- 
five thousand. Keep them all in 
town just in case we've got to de- 
fend ourselves. Except for that, 
forget the Skal and its whole crew.” 
“Right, Mr. Blord ! I’ll be seeing 
you.” 

Cantlin opened the door, saun- 
tered out. When the far door of 
the secretary’s office had closed be- 
hind him, Ellen Reith said : 

"So that's what all this melodra- 
matic groaning has been about ! 
When did you first discover that 
Cantlin had betrayed us?” 

"Huh?” gasped Magrusson. 
"What’s all this ?” 

Blord flashed him a bleak smile. 
“My old trouble with ambitious 
young men who want to set up as 
operators on their own. Only he 
and I and Miss Reith knew in ad- 
vance that we were going to the 
Midnight Club. Yesterday, one of 
the big banks received a deposit of 
twenty million stellors, under one of 
Cantlin’s pseudonyms that he didn’t 
know I knew about. 

"I hope we fooled him. The Skal 
made rather valiant efforts to con- 
vince me it was omnipotent. Part 
of its stock in trade, you know, is 
the superstitious awe with which 
people regard it. 

"You mean,” Magrusson said, 
"you’re going on with — ” 

Blord made no reply. He was 
lifting the receiver of the interoffice 
phone. A young woman’s face 
flashed onto the plate. As she saw 

24 



who it was, her eyes lighted. She 
said swiftly: 

“I’ve checked every one of your 
main eldo and local phones connect- 
ing to the labs on the planets you 
named, Artur. If there were ever 
tracers on them, it was done witli a 
skill we can't handle. I would say, 
however, that, barring supersuper- 
science, you can safely load the ether 
with secret calls.” 

"Thanks, Joan. It was just a 
check-up. ’By for now.” 

He clicked off ; and his smile was 
cooler now, with a quality in it of a 
tiger that has fed well. To Ellen 
Reith he said with a sardonic drawl : 
"For your information, Miss 
Reith, the lady to whom I just 
talked is a physicist who has three 
children, none of whom resemble 
me.” 

The inner door opened. Ellen 
Reith looked up from her desk. 
Two men emerged from Blord’s pri- 
vate office carrying a chest. From 
inside the room a burst of Blord’s 
laughter rippled. Laughter so elfish 
and gleeful and open-hearted that 
she found herself smiling in sympa- 
thy. The smile faded as the portly 
figure of Magrusson came into view. 

His face w r as wreathed in gloom. 
He closed the door, and stood star- 
ing mournfully at the girl. Finally, 
he shook his head and moaned: 
"He’s crazy! If there was any 
justice, he’d lose everything he 
owned. Did you see that chest ?” 
He motioned vaguely at the door, 
where the two men had disappeared. 
"Documents relating to ninety 

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 



million stellors’ worth of business. 
And do you know what he’s been 
doing about them the last week?” 
Ellen Reith held her peace. She 
knew very well, not that she didn’t 
sympathize with the tubby business 
manager. Magrusson was quiver- 
ing afresh, as if the picture he had 
drawn had jogged a whole set of 
new nerves into motion. 

“Nothing ! That’s what he’s been 
doing. And now he’s just scrawled 
a note, authorizing me to handle it 
routine fashion — without looking at 
any of it, mind you, without know- 
ing what a single sheet is about. 

“I shall,” said Magrusson with a 
sudden firmness, “I shall commit 
suicide if this goes on much longer. 
But of course, I forgot” — he drew 
back, looked at her accusingly — 
“you agree with him, don’t you?” 
The young woman returned his 
stare with a serene gaze. She said 
in a clear, cool voice: 

“The trouble with you solid busi- 
nessmen is you don't recognize gen- 
ius when you see it.” Her voice 
took on a scathing note : “What do 
a few million stellors matter? He 
can't possibly spend all the money 
he's already made.” 

Magrusson snarled : “You can 

talk. Born with a hundred bank- 
fuls of the stuff yourself." 

He paused, glared at her. “You’re 
like all the rest of these women 
around here. The great god can do 
no wrong. When 1 think of those 
women physicists over in a dozen 
labs on as many planets driving 
themselves and their assistants — do 
you know that most of them are not 



even going home to sleep ? — it 
makes me wonder what the universe 
is coming to.” 

His plump arm came up in a 
trembling gesture, as he motioned 
at the door through which he Jiad 
just come. His voice shook: 

“Do you know what he’s doing 
in there now ? Firing guns ! Hun- 
dreds of guns ! He’s torn down one 
of the walls, built models of a space- 
ship and the Castle of Pleasure, and 
he's alternately firing from one at 
the other — 

“But of course you know !” His 
voice drooped, then rose: “You've 
been here aiding and abetting him in 
this crazy scheme to destroy the 
Skal Thing. Miss Reith" — plead- 
ingly — “if you have any regard for 
Artur, and any influence over him, 
try to make him change his mind. 

“The Skal Thing has killed some 
very bright young men in its time. 
It’s merciless. It doesn't even 
know the meaning of pity. In its 
curious way, it sometimes enjoys 
playing cat and mouse with the ca- 
reers of individuals, taking a sar- 
donic and inhuman joy in leading 
on its victims. Then in a hell- 
ish amusement, it pushes them down 
into a specially prepared abyss.” 

The vivid word picture struck 
home. In spite of herself, Ellen felt 
a coldness. She saw that Magrus- 
son had noticed her troubled expres- 
sion. He gave her a swift, thought- 
ful look, then pressed on in a more 
persuasive voice: 

“You're a woman of the world. 
Miss Reith. You know that even 



tub: debt 



25 



Artur Blord must have his limita- 
tions. I admit he’s a fabulously 
gifted man. I don’t suppose his like 
is born more than once or twice a 
century. But this is a wild thing 
he's let himself go on. Usually, 
long before this stage of one of his 
schemes, he has a working plan, 
something concrete. 

“He admitted to me just now that 
he's not trying to develop a new 
weapon; and besides it’s ridiculous. 
Not even Artur Blord can call radi- 
cally new energy guns into existence 
merely by assigning the problem to 
a bunch of admiring women. 

"For once he’s overreached him- 
self, and it’s up to his friends to 
save him from himself. You’re just 
the type of woman he'll listen to. I 
mean, not one of these fools who sit 
starry-eyed when he so much as 
breezes through the room. In my 
opinion, you will be his first perma- 
nent secretary. But it’s no good be- 
ing secretary to a dead man, is it?” 

“No!” said Ellen Reith sweetly. 

Magrusson parted his lips eagerly 
to go on; and then the faint ironic 
expression on her face must have 
warned him that the single w r ord 
was answer, not to his question, but 
to his entire appeal. 

His face darkened. He straight- 
ened heavily, then raved : , 

“Like all the rest, that’s what you 
are. You — ” 

His voice collapsed, as the door 
to Blord’s office burst open, and 
Blord came racing out. 

“Got it!” he shouted. “The lab 
just phoned in. They’ve got the 
method, Ellen.” 

2<i 



He seemed to see Magrusson for 
the first time. “You still here?” he 
growled. “Never mind; you’re just 
the man I want to see. Find me 
someone whom I can send to die 
Skal, a man who will deliver a mes- 
sage.” 

“A message !” Magrusson’s voice 
sounded weak. 

“The message is to tell the Skal 
that I want it to destroy a spaceship 
that will approach the Castle of 
Pleasure at 008 sidereal hours six 
days from now, next Saturday. Tell 
it that this is the javor it promised 
me a few months ago. Got that?” 

“Yes, but—” 

The young woman's voice cut off 
Magrusson’s bewildered mumbling. 
She cried : “But who's going to be 
in the ship?” 

“I am,” said Artur Blord coolly. 
He went on blandly; “The Skal 
Thing is going to do me a favor and 
destroy itself.” 

Magrusson moaned, and went out 
waving his hands high in the air, 
mumbling disjointed fragments of 
words about insanity. 

Blord began to feel tense. 

The ship was in the umbra of 
Delfi I now, approaching the moun- 
tain of Eternal Night. He was still 
too far away to make out the darker 
outlines of that strange and antique 
building, the Castle of Pleasure. 

But it wouldn’t be long. Blord 
thought, and felt a thill. 

The clock on the dimmed instru- 
ment board showed seven minutes 
to eight; and at eight o’clock, the 

ASTOUNDING SCIKNCB-FICTIOqJ 



Skal had promised his messenger, it 
would — 

A sound very near and behind 
his chair snapped the taut thought. 
Blord jumped, then twisted around. 
For a moment, he sat very still. 
Then he said in a flat voice : 

“You fool! What are you try- 
ing to do — get yourself killed ?’’ 

A tinge of natural pink height- 
ened the delicate coloring on Ellen 
Reith's cheeks. She stood there, bit- 
ing her lips. Her eyes were very 
wide open, very blue ; and the faint- 
est mist blurred them. She said 
finally : 

“I didn’t intend to come out of 
hiding until — after. But there’s a 
curious mind pressure in the air; I 
know it’s not from inside my head. 
It’s mechanical, like energy waves 
that have found the wave length of 
my brain. You told me that the 
Skal Thing could read minds and — ’’ 
She stopped because she must 
have seen the look that came into his 
face even before he spoke. 

“Back!" he said sharply. “Get 
into the armored bulkhead, quick! 
I feel the Skal." 

She sat down in one of the chairs 
behind him. She was very white 
suddenly, but she shook her head. 

“You don’t understand,” she 
said quietly. “I came aboard be- 
cause if you were killed, I can’t even 
imagine what I would do.” She fin- 
ished hurriedly : “Now, please, pay 
no more attention to me.” 

Even if he had wanted, there 
wasn’t time. The ship was reeling 
to a halt in the very shadow of the 



dark castle — and something was 
groping at his mind. 

Something — a visualization of a 
long, scaly, reptile body — slithered 
into his brain. Unutterably slimy 
it was. Every nerve in his body re- 
coiled, and he had to fight a sense of 
mingled horror and disgust. 

The mind laughed with a glee 
that had no human counterpart ; and 
though familiarity did not lessen the 
sensation of obscene presence, the 
touch became bearable. It became a 
thought : 

“So, Artur Blord, we meet again. 
Did you really think to fool me, 
me?” 

There was a burst of mind-laugh- 
ter that had no amusement in it. A 
savage, steely laughter it was, that 
ended in a rasp of violent thought: 

“For the presumption you have 
shown, Artur Blord, you die to- 
night. I will see to it that the favor 
you requested shall be given you in 
the exact measure that you asked it : 
The destruction of your ship with 
all its contents at 008 sidereal hours 
shall be accomplished, in spite of 
the police ships that you have per- 
suaded to follow you on the rash 
promise that you would destroy my 
ancient Castle. 

“But have patience for one mo- 
ment while I discover in your mind 
the nature of your plan ; and then — 
death.” 

There was silence, and a distinct 
sense of the fantastic mind pushing 
at his brain. Finally, Artur Rlord 
began to laugh softly. 

“You are, I hope,” he inquired 



THE DEBT 



2T 



solicitously, “reading my mind ? Ex- 
ploring the nature of my plan ? De- 
vising means to combat it?” 

“Or perhaps,” Blord said, “you 
are discovering that my mind is im- 
penetrable. 

“Just a simple little device,” he 
explained modestly, “that one of my 
. . . er . . . wives, as Miss Reith 
would say, rigged up. A machine 
that matches the wave length of the 
brain's nervous energy, and confuses 
all except the strongest surface 
thoughts. 

"Nothing new about it, mind you. 
Discovered quite a few thousand 
years ago, but the inventor at the 
time said: ‘So what!’ If you’ve 
ever been in my co-ordination de- 
partment, Skal, you’d know that it 
contains all kinds of similarly use- 
less and almost forgotten devices for 
aiding and abetting the exploits of 
Artur Blord. 

"But it’s time for action. A pity 
to have to destroy such an ancient 
structure as your castle. I regret 
I must terminate our interesting 
conversation.” 

He taunted: “You haven't been 
very bright tonight, my admirable 
friend. Is it possible that you, too, 
are beginning to believe Artur Blord 
never makes a public move until he 
knows that victory is certain?” 

The answer was a mind snarl, a 
thought so alien and ferocious that, 
in spite of himself, Blord felt a 
thrill of pure fright. The Skal’s 
thought blazed : 

“When in doubt, I use my invin- 
cible weapons without delay, weap- 
ons that in the past have destroyed 

28 



ships like yours in one instantane- 
ous burst of fire. I am sure that 
you have not in a single fortnight 
discovered a super metal or a super 
energy blaster with which to defeat 
me. Good-by, Artur Blord.” 

With a physical jerk of move- 
ment, Blord twisted toward the in- 
tricate control board. Straight at 
the scores of silhouetted dark tow- 
ers that pierced the dark sky like 
great swords, he aimed his pointer 
device. He was still aiming when 
enormous green flashes surged from 
every spire of that multi-turreted 
building of a forgotten race. 

From stem to stern, his ship 
flared, like an emerald suddenly 
subjected to an intolerable light. 

Bright were the myriad lights of 
Negor, and dark the sea of Kalli- 
dee, a gem city on the shores of a 
restless sea; and the brightest dia- 
dem in all that crown of jewel lights 
was the Midnight Club, with its 
ninety entrances on the famous 
Blord Crescent Drive. 

Outwardly, all was brilliance ; ev- 
ery gaming room was packed with 
players, every cocktail room had its 
swarms of well-dressed men and 
women. But deep inside the mas- 
sive array of buildings that was the 
Club, half a hundred masked men 
gathered in a great, dim, orna- 
mented chamber, and sat compla- 
cently listening to one of their num- 
ber. 

“As you know,” the speaker was 
saying, “this is the night when the 
Artur Blord intended to destroy our 

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 




invincible benefactor and patron 
saint, the Skal Thing — ” 

Cheers and laughter interrupted 
him. He waved his hand; and, on 
being granted silence, went on : 

“In view of the fact that one of 
our" — his tone grew ironic — “more 
recent members informed the Skal 
six days ago that Blord would be in 
the ship which, for some curious 
reason, he wanted the Skal to de- 
stroy, and also because it is now 
long after midnight — ” 

His voice trailed curiously. His 
eyes behind their mask slits wid- 
ened. Doors were opening all over 
the hall, and men were surging 
through, men with long, silver shin- 
ing mobile units in their hands. Si- 
multaneously, the large room lit up 
bright as day. A voice that had in 
it the hardness of iron said : 

“Anybody that so much as moves 
gets it! Search them." 

Nobody moved. In five minutes 
a stack of hand weapons attested to 
the thoroughness of the search. 

“O. K., boss. Stage is set.” 
Artur Blord, followed by Ellen 
Reith, entered the room. The odd 
thing was that, for a moment, she 
and not Blord was the center of all 
eyes. She wore a gorgeous Satia- 
rada fur jacket that contrasted so 



vividly with her red-gold hair that 
her great natural beauty figura- 
tively leaped ahead of her. And 
then — 

Blord said: “Thanks, Cantlin. 

I'll make it brief.” 

He raised his voice to a grim reso- 
nance : “Gentlemen, you have a 

choice between death and poverty. 
There are no other alternatives. 
It’s your money or your life, and 
this time for your special benefit I’m 
discarding my policy of taking 
twenty-five percent of the profits. 
This time I want an even hundred 
percent. 

“Well, perhaps not a hundred — 
ninety-eight will do. I have in mind 
a certain very foolish member of 
this gathering.” 

His voice changed, grew mock- 
ing: “Come, come, now, my mur- 
derous gentlemen, here’s your 
chance for life. Sign over all your 
ill-got earnings, and I’ll simply turn 
you over to the Fasser government 
for trial. You can all in your own 
minds estimate what chance there is 
of a conviction being made against 
you in a court of law. 

“But the price for that privilege 
is high, you scum, high — everything 
you own. I have a lovely machine 
which makes people tell the truth 



THE DEBT 



29 



about such things as secret bank ac- 
counts ; so there’s no escape at all.” 

“This is an outrage !” It was the 
man who had been speaking at the 
moment when the meeting was in- 
terrupted minutes before. 

He was about to go on, when 
Blord shot him dead. Ellen Reith 
uttered an audible gasp, but Blord 
paid her no attention. 

“Come, come,” his voice came like 
a steel bar. “No delay, please. I 
assure you I have no patience with 
the bloody hounds who supplied the 
Skal with women. Ah, as I thought, 
the object lesson was helpful. Step 
right into this room, one by one. 

“No doubt,” he went on in that 
terrible, mocking fashion, “no doubt 
you can make more money in time. 
There are other games requiring 
crafty minds and cold hearts — pro- 
vided, of course, you escape the long 
arm of the law — No, fatty, you 
don't have to go in. I've got spe- 
cial plans for you. This way, 
please.” 

The man indicated stepped out of 
line. His eyes through his mask slits 
looked glassy, but he said nothing, 
just stood there beside Ellen Reith 
staring down at the handcuffs that 
two of Blord's agents snapped de- 
cisively on his wrists. 

Ellen Reith looked at him in ap- 
palled recognition. “Mr. Magrus- 
son !” she gasped. “You!” 

The plump man groaned: “It's 

Blord’s fault — refusing for weeks on 
end to look at important papers — 
the opportunity proved too much for 
me. It was I who made the ten mil- 

30 



lion stellors a day BJord lost >at such 
times. 

“Skal Thing found out somehow, 
and threatened to expose me if I 
didn’t do as it wanted. That was 
about two weeks ago. I was too 
scared to resist.” 

He sighed: “So here I am, like 
all the fools who have ever stacked 
up against Blord. What I can't un- 
derstand is, what’s Cantlin doing 
here? I know for a fact that he 
sold out to the Skal.” 

Ellen Reith did not answer imme- 
diately. A lot of things were 
clearer, and the main one was that 
doing business in the Ridge Stars 
must be very complicated. 

She said finally : “I can only im- 
agine Artur bribed Cantlin to come 
back into his service.” 

“What about the castle; has he 
really destroyed it?” 

Ellen nodded ; Magrusson pressed 
on, puzzled : 

“But how?” 

“That,” said Ellen Reith, “is a 
question I have yet to ask myself. 
So far as I could see, we neyer fired 
a shot, but suddenly the castle be- 
gan to crumble like a house of cards. 
Artur expects the Skal to get away, 
but we didn't wait. The police are 
in the castle; they’ve already cap- 
tured some of the Skal’s weapons. 
The castle is definitely conquered — 
but how, I don’t know.” 

Blord laughed at the flood of 
questions that came later as they 
sat eating breakfast in the sky- 
scraper penthouse apartment that 
was his headquarters. 

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 



“I’ll make my answers one at a 
time,” he smiled finally. "Magrus- 
son I’m taking back into the firm. 
He’s had a sharp lesson, and actu- 
ally lie’s too old to become an opera- 
tor on his own, and he knows it. 

“Besides, what the Skal got out 
of his mind must have puzzled it no 
end. Unwittingly, Magrusson was 
a great help to me. 

“Cantlin — I've got a tremendous 
project starting up on the newly dis- 
covered planet, Deg III, and I’ve 
offered him a seventy-five-percent 
share to run it for me. It’ll need a 
man of blade steel and, just to 
toughen him up even more, I let him 
carry out the executions last night.” 
“You let him what?" 

“You don’t think,” he said from 
between clenched teeth, “I’d let tliat 
crew stay alive, particularly in view 
of the fact that there was no real 
evidence again them, particularly 
since the Skal, as I anticipated, 
made a clean getaway.” 

“But — you promised.” 

“I'm like that,” Blord said 
lightly. “The value of my word 

varies as the square of the character 
of the person to whom it is made.” 
She was silent ; then slowly : 
“You’re a terrible man ; I only be- 
gan to realize how terrible yester- 
day. But go on." 

“That,” said Blord, “finishes ev- 
erything but the castle. The answer 
there is: mirrors; my marvelous 
physicists rigged up energy mirrors 
for me on an old radio beam prin- 
ciple.” 

He went on with a genuine glee- 

THE 



ful enjoyment of his own astuteness: 

“I told both you and Magrusson 
that the Skal would be defeated 
when it did for me the favor it had 
promised me. That’s exactly what 
happened. 

“The mirrors on the ship didn’t 
last more than a second in that green 
blast. But neither did the castle 
walls or the guns behind them when 
they received the reflected blow.” 
Blord shuddered. “What inconceiv- 
able fire power! It’s a wonder we 
weren’t both killed. We — ” 

He stopped as a phone in the next 
room shrilled the high-pitched 
squeal of an interstellar call. The 
sound ended as Blord came into 
vision range, changed to an intense 
blue flicker, that ended in its turn 
as he lifted the receiver. 

“Artur Blord speaking!" 

Before he could say anything 
more, a nightmare voice chuckled 
sardonically : 

“You are even more clever,” the 
Skal Thing said, “than I believed. 
However, I assure you I hold no 
grudges. If we meet again, I shall 
judge my actions by the require- 
ments of the moment. Good-by, any 
brilliant one, and good luck.” 

Click! When he had told her the 
gist, Ellen Reith said slowly: “Do 
you believe that it actually holds no 
grudge?” 

Artur Blord laughed softly. "The 
important thing is, the Castle of 
Pleasure is permanently out of busi- 
ness. I think I'll just leave it at 
that.” 

Which he did. 

END. 



THE DEBT 



SI 



IN TIMES TO COME 



If you define “two” as we do, then two plus two must equal a something defined 
as we define "four,” whether you’re a man, a Martian, or a Qwerty from Asdfgh- 
Zxcvb. That’s evident and necessary — mathematical concepts must be fundamental 
and identical everywhere. There’s Euclidian and non-Euclidian geometry of course — 
but actually, the Euclidian type is one limiting case, a flat-space case, of the general 
study ; its concepts will be necessary in any complete geometry developed anywhere. 

Now offhand, it would seem that, in a similar way, engineering principles here, 
on Mars or on Asdfgh-Zxcvb would have to be the same, too. Hal Clement has 
something to say on that score in "Technical Error” next month- — something that 
runs along this line. The broad, basic principles will, of course, be identical ; a sodium 
atom behaves like an atom of Na here or in the Greater Magellenic Cloud. But 
there is room for infinite variety and ingenuity in details of mechanism for applying 
those principles. In “Technical Error,” Clement presents a spaceship designed by 
totally alien minds working on completely alien engineering methods. I recommend 
for particular attention the choice item of bolts with eliptical cross-section. You try 
figuring out how to turn an oval object in a close-fitting oval hole! 

The Editor. 



THE ANALYTICAL LABORATORY 

The little note that, these lab reports being based on readers’ letters, such letters 
were wanted, seems to have brought response. Thankee kindly ; we need them and 
like them. It’s a physical impossibility to answer all, or print all. (The latter also 
runs into an economic difficulty ; the post office insists that Brass Tacks is advertising 
matter, and taxes it as such. Believe it or not, it costs more to print those free 
letters than to print an equal amount of purchased editorial material. ) I am going to 
try to expand Brass Tacks, none the less; the trouble at present is that we haven't 
yet gotten the knack of guesstimating accurately how much space a story will take 
in the new-sue issues. 

The votes cast on the October issue, however, are the point in hand. They 
indicate that odds of 50,000,000 to 1 win — fifty million monkeys win out over one 
storm, that is. The scores stand: 



Place 


Story 


Author 


Points 


1. 


Fifty Million Monkeys 


Raymond F. Jones 


1.85 


2. 


The Storm 


A. E. van Vogt 


2.35 


3. 


The Proud Robot 


Lewis Padgett 


2.70 


4. 


Symbiotica 


Eric F. Russell 


3.62 


5. 


Paradox Lost 


Frederic Brown 


4.45 

The Editor. 



32 



ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 




Lost Art 

by George 0. Smith 



The vanished Martians had left a tube and a com- 
plete instruction manual behind. Complete, that is, 
if you already knew all about using that strange tube! 



Illustrated 

Sargon of Akkad was holding 
court in all of his splendor in the 
Mesopotamia area, which he thought 
to be the center of the Universe. 
The stars to him were but holes in 
a black bowl which he called the 
sky. They were beautiful then, as 
they are now, but he thought that 
they were put there for his edifica- 
tion only; for was he not the ruler 
of Akkadia? 

After Sargon of Akkad, there 



by Orban 

would come sixty centuries of climb- 
ing before men reached the stars 
and found not only that there had 
been men upon them, but that a 
civilization on Mars had reached its 
peak four thousand years l>efore 
Christ and was now but a memory 
and a wealth of pictographs that 
adorned the semipreserved Temples 
of Canalopsis. 

And sixty centuries after, the men 
of Terra wondered about the ideo- 



33 



LOST ART 



graphs and solved them sufficiently 
to piece together the wonders of the 
long-dead Martian Civilization. 

Sargon of Akkad did not know 
that the stars that he beheld carried 
on them wonders his mind would 
not, could not, accept. 

Altas, the Martian, smiled toler- 
antly at his son. The young man 
boasted on until Altas said: “So 

you have memorized the contents of 
iny manual? Good, Than, for I 
am growing old and I would be 
pleased to have my son fill my shoes. 
Come into the workshop that I may 
pass upon your proficiency.” 

Altas led Than to the laboratory 
that stood at the foot of the great 
tower of steel; Altas removed from 
a cabinet a replacement element 
from the great beam above their 
heads, and said: “Than, show me 
how to hook this up !” 

Than’s eyes glowed. From other 
cabinets he took small auxiliary 
parts. From hooks upon the wall, 
Than took lengths of wire. Work- 
ing with a brilliant deftness that was 
his heritage as a Martian, Than 
ocnt an hour attaching the com- 
plicated circuits. After he was fin- 
ished, Than stepped back and said : 
“There — and believe it or not, this 
is the first time you have permitted 
me to work with one of the beam 
elements.” 

"You have done well,” said Altas 
with that same cryptic smile. “But 
now we shall see. The main ques- 
tion is: Does it work?” 
“Naturally,” said Than in youth- 
ful pride. "Is it not hooked up 

34 



exactly as your manual says? It 
will work.” 

“We shall see,” repeated Altas. 
“We shall see.” 

Barney Carroll and James Baler 
cut through the thin air of Mars 
in a driver-wing flier at a terrific 
rate of speed. It was the only kind 
of flier that would work on Mars 
with any degree of safety since it 
depended upon the support of its 
drivers rather than the wing sur- 
face. They were hitting it up at 
almost a thousand miles per hour on 
their way from Canalopsis to Lin- 
coln Head ; their trip would take 
an hour and a half. 

As they passed over the red sand 
of Mars, endlessly it seemed, a glint 
of metal caught Barney’s eye, and 
he shouted. 

“What’s the matter, Barney ?” 
asked Jim. 

“Roll her over and run back a 
mile or so,” said Barney. “I saw 
something down there that didn’t 
belong in this desert.” 

Jim snapped the plane around in 
a sharp loop that nearly took their 
heads off, and they ran back along 
their course. 

“Yop,” called Baraev, “there she 
is !” 

“What?” 

“See that glint of shiny metal?’ 
That doesn’t belong in this mess of 
erosion. Might be a crash.” 

“Hold tight,” laughed Jim. 
“We’re going down.” 

They did. Jim's piloting had all 
of the aspects of a daredevil racing 
pilot’s, and Barney was used to it. 

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 



Jim snapped the nose of the little 
flier down and they power-dived to 
within a few yards of the sand be- 
fore he set the plane on its tail and 
skidded flatwise to kill speed. He 
leveled off, and the flier came 
screaming in for a perfect landing 
not many feet from the glinting ob- 
ject. 

“This is no crash,” said Baler. 
“This looks like the remains of an 
air-lane beacon of some sort.” 

“Does it? Not like any I've ever 
seen. It reminds me more of some 
of the gadgets they find here and 
there — the remnants of the Ancients. 
They used to build junk like this.” 

“Hook up the sand-blower,” sug- 
gested Jim Baler. “We'll clear 
some of this rubble away and see 
what she really looks like. Can’t 
see much more than what looks like 
a high-powered searchlight.” 

Barney hauled equipment out of 
the flier and hitched it to a small 
'motor in the plane. The blower 
created a small storm for an hour 
or so, its blast directed by suit- 
clad Barney Carroll. Working 
with experience gained in uncover- 
ing the remains of a dozen dead and 
buried cities, Barney cleared the 
shifting sand from the remains of 
the tower. 

The head was there, preserved 
by the dry sand. Thirty feet below 
the platform, the slender tower was 
broken off. No delving could find 
the lower portion. 

“This is quite a find." said Jim. 
“Looks like some of the carvings on 
the Temple of Science at Canafop- 
sis — that little house on the top of 

LOST ART 



the spire with the three-foot run- 
way around it; then this dingbat 
perched on top of the roof. Never 
did figure out what it was for.” 

“We don’t know whether the 
Martians’ eyes responded as ours 
do,” suggested Barney. “This 
might be a searchlight that puts out 
with Martian visible spectrum. If 
they saw with infrared, they 
wouldn’t be using Terran fluorescent 
lighting. If they saw with long 
heat frequencies, they wouldn’t 
waste power with even a tungsten 
filament light, but would have in- 
vented something that cooked its 
most energy in the visible spectrum, 
just as we have in the last couple 
of hundred years.” 

“That’s just a guess, of course.” 

“Naturally',” said Barney. “Here, 
I’ve got the door cracked. Let’s 
be the first people in this place for 
six thousand years Terran. Take 
it easy, this floor is at an angle of 
thirty degrees.” 

“I won’t slide. G’wan in. I’m 
your shadow.” 

They entered the thirty-foot cir- 
cular room and snapped on their 
torches. There was a bench that 
ran almost around the entire room. 
It was empty save for a few scraps 
of metal and a Martian book of 
several hundred metal pages. 

“Nuts,” said Barney, “we would 
have to find a thing like this but 
empty. That’s our luck. What’s 
the book, Jim?" 

“Some sort of text. I’d say. Full 
of diagrams and what seems to be 
mathematics. Hard to tell, of 

AST— 2A 35 



course, but we’ve established the 
fact that mathematics is universal, 
though the characters can not pos- 
sibly be.” 

"Any chance of deciphering it?” 
asked Barney. 

"Let’s get back in the flier and 
try. I’m in no particular hurry.” 

"Nor am I. I don’t care whether 
we get to Lincoln Head tonight or 
the middle of next week.” — - 

“Now let’s see that volume of dia- 
grams,” he said as soon as they 
were established in the flier. 

Jim passed the book over, and 
Barney opened the book to the first 
page. "If we never find anything 
else,” he said, "this will make us 
famous. I am now holding the first 
complete volume of Martian litera- 
ture that anyone has ever seen. The 
darned thing is absolutely complete, 
from cover to cover!” 

“That’s a find,” agreed Jim. 
“Now go ahead and transliterate it 
— you’re the expert on Martian pic- 
tographs.” 

For an hour, Barney scanned the 
pages of the volume. He made 
copious notes on sheets of paper 
which he inserted between the metal 
leaves of the book. At the end of 
that time, during which Jim Baler 
had been inspecting the searchlight- 
thing on the top of the little house, 
he called to his friend, and Jim 
entered the flier lugging the thing 
on his shoulders. 

“What’cba got?” he grinned. "I 
brought this along. Nothing else 
in that shack, so we’re complete ex- 
cept for the remnants of some very 
badly corroded cable that ran from 



this thing to a flapping end down 
where the tower was broken.” 

Barney smiled and blinked. It 
was strange to see this big man 
working studiously over a book ; 
Barney Carroll should have been 
leading a horde of Venusian en- 
gineers through the Palanortis 
country instead of delving into the 
artifacts of a dead civilization. 

“I think that this thing is a sort 
of engineer’s handbook,” he said. 
"In the front there is a section 
devoted to mathematical tables. 
You know, a table of logs to the 
base twelve which is because the 
Martians had six fingers on each 
hand. There is what seems to be 
a table of definite integrals — at least 
if I were writing a handbook -I'd 
place the table of integrals at the 
last part of the math section. The 
geometry and trig is absolutely 
recognizable because of the designs. 
So is the solid geom and the analyt 
for the same reason. The next 
section seems to be devoted to 
chemistry ; the Martians used a 
hexagonal figure for a benzene ring, 
too, and so that’s established. From 
that we find the key to the Periodic 
Chart of the Atoms which is run 
vertically instead of horizontally, 
but still unique. These guys were 
sharp, though ; they seem to have hit 
upon the fact that isotopes are 
separate elements though so close 
in grouping to one another that 
they exhibit the same properties. 
Finding this will uncover a lot of 
mystery.” 

“Yeah,” agreed Baler, "from a 
book of this kind we can decipher 



30 



ASTOUNDING SCIENCE FICTION 



most anything. The keying on a 
volume of physical constants is per- 
fect and almost infinite in number. 
What do they use for Pi?” 

“Circle with a double dot inside.” 

“And Plank’s Constant?” 

“Haven’t hit that one yet. But 
we will. But to get back to the 
meat of this thing, the third section 
deals with something strange. It 
seems to have a bearing on this 
gadget from the top of the tower. 
I’d say that the volume was a tech- 
nical volume on the construction, 
maintenance, and repair of the 
tower and its functions — whatever 
they are.” 

Barney spread the volume out for 
Jim to see. “That dingbat is some 
sort of electronic device. Or, per- 
haps subelectronic. Peel away that 
rusted side and we’ll look inside.” 

Jim peeled a six-inch section from 
the side of the big metal tube, and 
they inspected the insides. Barney 
looked thoughtful for a minute and 
then flipped the pages of the book 
until he came to a diagram. 

“Sure,” he said exultantly, “this 
is she. (Look, Jim, they draw a 
cathode like this, and the grids are 
made with a series of fine parallel 
lines. Different, but more like th^ 
real grid than our symbol of a zig- 
zag line. The plate is a round circle 
instead of a square, but that’s so 
clearly defined that it comes out 
automatically. Here’s your annular 
electrodes, and the . . . call ’em 
deflection plates. I think we can 
hook this do-boodle up as soon as 
we get to our place in Lincoln 
Head.” 



“Let’s go then. Not only would 
I like to see this thing work, but 
I’d give anything to know what it’s 
for!” 

“You run the crate,” said Barney, 
“and I’ll try to decipher this mess 
into voltages for the electrode- 
supply and so on. Then we'll be in 
shape to go ahead and hook her up.” 

The trip to Lincoln Head took 
almost an hour. Barney and Jim 
landed in their landing yards and 
took the book and the searchlight- 
tiling inside. They went to their 
laboratory, and called for sandwiches 
and tea. Jim’s sister brought in the 
food a little later and found them 
tinkering with the big beam tube. 

“What have you got this time?” 
she groaned. 

“Name it and it’s yours,” laughed 
Barney. 

“A sort of gadget that we found 
on the Red Desert." 

“What does it do?” asked Chris- 
tine Baler. 

“Well,” said Jim, “it's a sort of 
a kind of a dingbat that does 
things.” 

“Uh-huh,” said Christine. “A 
dololly that plings the inghams.” 

“Right !” 

“You’re well met, you two. Have 
your fun. But for Pete’s sake don’t 
forget to eat. Not that you will, I 
know you, but a girl has got to make 
some sort of attempt at admonish- 
ment. I’m going to the niooni- 
picher. I’ll see you when I return.” 

“I’d say stick around,” said Bar- 
ney. “But I don’t think we’ll have 
anything to show you for hours and 



LOST ART 



37 



hours. We'll have something by 
the time you return.” 

Christine left, and the men ap- 
plied themselves to their problem. 
Barney had done wonders in un- 
raveling the unknown. Inductances, 
he found, were spirals; resistance 
were dotted lines ; capacitances were 
parallel squares. 

“What kind of stuff do we use 
for voltages?” asked Jim. 

“That’s a long, hard trail,” 
laughed Barney. "Basing my cal- 
culations on the fact that their 
standard voltage cell was the same 
as ours, we apply the voltages as 
listed on my schematic here.” 
“Can you assume that their 
standard is the same as ours?” 
“Better,” said Barney. “The 
Terran Standard Cell — the well- 
known Weston Cell — dishes out 
what we call 1.0183 volts at twenty- 
degrees C. Since the Martian de- 
scription of their Standard Cell is 
essentially the same as the Terran, 
they are using the same thing. Only 
they use sense and say that a volt 
is the unit of a standard cell, period. 
Calculating their figures on the nu- 
merical base of twelve is tricky, 
but I’ve done it.” 

“You’re doing fine. How do you 
assume their standard is the same ?” 
"Simple,” said Barney in a cheer- 
ful tone. "Thank God for their 
habit of drawing pictures. Here 
we have the well-known H tube. 
The electrodes are signified by the 
symbols for the elements used. The 
Periodic Chart in the first section 
came in handy here. But look, 
master mind, this dinky should be 

38 



evacuated, don’t you think?” 

“If it’s electronic or subelectronic, 
it should be. We can solder up 
this breach here and apply the hyvac 
pump. Rig us up a power supply 
whilst I repair the blowout.” 
“Where’s the BFO ?” 

“What do you want with that?" 
asked Jim. 

“Tphe second anode takes about 
two hundred volts worth of eighty- 
four cycles,” explained Barney. 
“Has a sign that seems to signify 
‘In Phase,’ but I'll be darned if I 
know with what. Y'know, Jim. 
this dingbat looks an awful lot like 
one of the drivers we use in our 
spaceships and driver-wing fliers.” 
“Yeah,” drawled Jim. “About 
the same recognition as the differ- 
ence between Edison’s first electric 
light and a twelve-element, electron 
multiplier, power output tube. 
Similarity : They both have cath- 

odes.” 

“Edison didn’t have a cathode — ” 
“Sure he did. Just because he 
didn’t hang a plate inside of the 
bottle doesn’t stop the filament from 
being a cathode.” 

Barney snorted. “A mouode, 
hey ?” 

“Precisely. After which come 
diodes, triodes, tetrodes, pentodes, 
hexodes, heptodes — ” 

“ — and the men in the white 
coats. How’s your patching job?” 
“Fine. How’s your power-supply 
job?” 

“Good enough,” said Barney. 
“This eighty-four cycles is not go- 
ing to be a sine wave at two hun- 
dred volts ; the power stage of the 

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 



BFO overloads just enough to bring 
in a bit of second harmonic.” 

‘‘A beat-frequency-oscillator was 
never made to run at that level,” 
complained Jim Baler. “At least, 
not this one. She’ll tick on a bit 
of second, I think.” 

“Are we ready for the great ex- 
periment ?” 

“Yup, and I still wish I knew 
what the thing was for. Go ahead, 
Barney. Crack the big switch !” 

Altas held up a restraining hand 
as Than grasped the main power 
switch. “Wait,” he said. “Does 
one stand in his sky flier and leave 
the ground at full velocity? Or 
does one start an internal combus- 
tion engine at full speed?” 

“No," said the youngster. “We 
usually take it slowly.” 

“And like the others, we must 
tune our tube. And that we cannot 
do under full power. Advance your 
power lever one-tenth step and we’ll 
adjust the deflection anodes.” 

“I’ll get the equipment,” said 
Than. “I forgot that part.” 

“Never mind the equipment,” 
smiled Altas. “Observe.” 

Altas picked up a long screw- 
driverlike tool and inserted it into 
the maze of wiring that surrounded 
the tube. Squinting in one end of 
the big tube, he turned the tool 
until the cathode surface brightened 
slightly. He adjusted the instru- 
ment until the cathode was at its 
brightest, and then withdrew the 
tool. 

“That will do for your experi- 
mental set-up," smiled Altas. “The 



operation in service is far more 
critical and requires equipment. As 
an experiment, conducted singly, the 
accumulative effect cannot be dan- 
gerous, though if the deflection 
plates are not properly served with 
their supply voltages, the experi- 
ment is a failure. The operation of 
the tube depends upon the perfec- 
tion of the deflection-plate voltages.” 

“No equipment is required, 
then?” 

“It should have been employed.” 
said Altas modestly. “But in my 
years as a beam-tower attendant, 
I have learned the art of aligning 
the plates by eye. Now, son, we 
may proceed from there.” 

Barney Carroll took a deep breath 
and let the power switch fall home. 
Current meters swung across their 
scales for an instant, and then the 
lights went out in the house! 

“Fuse blew,” said Barney shortly. 
He gumbled his way through the 
dark house and replaced the fuse. 
He returned smiling. “Fixed that 
one,” he told Jim. “Put a washer 
behind it.” 

“O. K. Hit the switch again.” 

Barney cranked the power over, 
and once more the meters climbed 
up across the scales. There was a 
groaning sound from the tube, and 
the smell of burning insulation filled 
the room. One meter blew with an 
audible sound as the needle hit the 
end stop, and immediately afterward 
the lights in the entire block went 
out. 

“Fix that one by hanging a penny 
behind it,” said Jim with a grin. 

SB 



LOST ART 



"That’s a job for Martian Electric 
to do,” laughed Barney. 

Several blocks from there, an at- 
tendant in the substation found the 
open circuit-breaker and shoved it 
in with a grim smile. He looked 
up at the power-demand meter and 
grunted. High for this district, but 
not dangerous. Duration, approxi- 
mately fifteen seconds. Intensity, 
higher than usual but not high 
enough to diagnose any failure of 
the wiring in the district. "Ah, 
well,” he thought, "we can crank 
up the blow-point on this breaker if 
it happens again.” 

He turned to leave and the crash- 
ing of the breaker scared him out 
of a week’s growth. He snarled and 
said a few choice words not fit for 
publication. He closed the breaker 
and screwed the blow-point control 
up by two-to-one. "That’ll hold ’em,” 
he thought, and then the ringing of 
the telephone called him to his of- 
fice, and he knew that he was in 
for an explanatory session with some 
people who wanted to know why 
their lights were going on and off. 
He composed a plausible tale on his 
way to the phone. Meanwhile, he 
wondered about the unreasonable 
demand and concluded that one of 
the folks had just purchased a new 
power saw or something for their 
home workshop. 

"Grack the juice about a half,” 
suggested Barney. "That’ll keep us 
on the air until we find out what 
kind of stuff this thing takes. The 
book claims about one tenth of the 
current-drain for this unit. Some- 
thing we’ve missed, no doubt.” 



"Let’s see that circuit,” said Jim. 
After a minute, he said: "Look, 

guy, what are these screws for?” 

"They change the side plate 
voltages from about three hundred 
to about three hundred and fifty. 
I’ve got ’em set in the middle of 
the range.” 

"Turn us on half voltage and did- 
dle one of ’em.” 

“That much of a change shouldn’t 
make the difference,” objected 
Barney. 

"Brother, we don’t know what 
this thing is even for,” reminded 
Jim. "Much less do we know the 
effect of anything on it. Diddle, I 
say.” 

"O. K., we diddle.” Barney 
turned on half power and reached 
into the maze of wiring and began 
to tinker with one of the screws. 
“Hm-m-m,” he said after a minute. 
"Does things, all right. She goes 
through some kind of reasonance 
point or something. There is a spot 
of minimum current here. There! 
I’ve hit it. Now for the other one.” 

For an hour, Barney tinkered 
with first one screw and then the 
other one. He found a point where 
the minimum current was really 
low ; the two screws were interde- 
pedent and only by adjusting them 
alternately was he able to reach the 
proper point on each. Then he 
smiled and thrust the power on full. 
The current remained at a sane 
value. 

“Now what?” asked Barney. 

“I don’t know. Anything coming 
out of the business end?” 

"Heat.” 



40 



ASTOUNDING SCIENCE FICTION 



“Yeah, and it’s about as lethal as 
a sun lamp. D'ye suppose the Mar- 
tians used to artificially assist their 
crops by synthetic sunshine?" 

Barney applied his eve to a spec- 
troscope. It was one of the newer 
designs that encompassed every- 
thing from short ultraviolet to long 
infrared by means of fluorescent 
screens at the invisible wave lengths. 
He turned the instrument across 
the spectrum and shook his head. 
“Might be good for a chest cold," 
he said, “but you wouldn’t get a 
sunburn off of it. It’s all in the 
infra. Drops off like a cliff just 
below the deep red. Nothing at all 
in the visible or above. Gee,” he 
said with a queer smile, “you don’t 
suppose that they died off because 
of a pernicious epidemic of colds 
and they tried chest-cooking en 
masse?” 

“I’d believe anything if this 
darned gadget were found in a popu- 
lated district," said Jim. “But we 
know that the desert was here when 
the Martians were here, and that it 
was just as arid as it is now. They 
wouldn’t try farming in a place 
where iron oxide abounds.” 
“Spinach ?” 

“You don’t know a lot about 
farming, do you?" asked Tim. 

“I saw a cow once.” 

“That does not qualify you as an 
expert on farming.” 

“I know one about the farmer’s 
daughter, and — ” 

“Not even an expert on dirt farm- 
ing,” continued Jim. “Nope, Bar- 
ney, we aren’t even close." 



Barney checked the book once 
more and scratched his nose. 

“How about that eighty-four 
cycle supply,” asked Jim. 

“It's eighty-four, all right. From 
the Martian habit of using twelve 
as a base, I’ve calculated the num- 
ber to be eighty-four.” 

“Diddle that, too,” suggested 
Jim. 

“O. K.,” said Barney. “It doesn’t 
take a lot to crank that one around 
from zero to about fifteen thousand 
c.p.s. Here she goes!” 

Barney took the main dial of the 
beat-frequency oscillator and began 
to crank it around the scale. He 
went up from eighty-four to the 
top of the dial and then returned. 
No effect. Then he passed through 
eighty-four and started down to- 
ward zero. 

He hit sixty cycles and the jack- 
pot at the same time! 

At exactly sixty cycles, a light 
near the wall dimmed visibly. The 
wallpaper scorched and burst into 
a smoldering flame on a wall op- 
posite the dimmed light. 

Barney removed the BFO from 
the vicinity of sixty cycles and Jim 
extinguished the burning wallpaper. 

“Now we’re getting somewhere,” 
said Barney. 

“This is definitely some sort of 
weapon,” said Jim. “She’s not very 
efficient right now, but we can find 
out why and then we’ll have some- 
thing hot." 

“What for?" asked Barney. “No- 
body hates anybody any more." 

“Unless the birds who made this 



LOST ART 



41 



thing necessary return,” said Jim 
soberly. His voice was ominous. 
“We know that only one race of 
Martians existed, and they were all 
amicable. I suspect an inimical race 
from outer space — ” 

“Could be. Some of the boys 
are talking about an expedition to 
Centauri right now. We could have 
had a visitor from somewhere dur- 
ing the past.” 

“If you define eternity as the time 
required for everything to happen 
once, I agree. In the past or in die 
future, we have or will be visited 
by a super race. It may have hap- 
pened six thousand years ago.” 
“Did you notice that the electric 
light is not quite in line with the 
axis of the tube?” asked Barney. 

“Don’t turn it any closer,” said 
Jim. "In fact, I’d turn it away be- 
fore we hook it up again.” 

There she is. Completely out of 
line with the light. Now shall we 
try it again?” 

“Go ahead.” 

Barney turned the BFO gingerly, 
and at sixty cycles the thing seemed 
quite sane. Nothing happened. 
“Shall I swing it around?” 

“I don’t care for fires as a general 
rule,” said Jim. “Especially in my 
own home. Turn it gently, and 
take care that you don’t focus the 
tube full on that electric light.” 
Barney moved the tube slightly, 
and then with a cessation of noise, 
the clock on the wall stopped ab- 
ruptly. The accustomed ticking had 
not been noticed by either man, but 
the unaccustomed lack-of-ticking 
became evident at once. Barney 

42 



shut off the BFO immediately and 
the two men sat down to a head- 
scratching session. 

“She’s good for burning wall- 
paper, dimming electric lights, and 
stopping clocks,” said Barney. “Any 
of which you could do without a 
warehouse full of cockeyed electrical 
equipment. Wonder if she’d stop 
anything more powerful than a 
clock.” 

“I’ve got a quarter-horse motor 
here. Let's wind that up and try 
it.” 

The motor was installed on a 
bench nearby, and the experiment 
was tried again. At sixty cycles 
the motor groaned to a stop, and the 
windings began to smolder. But 
at the same time the big tube began 
to exhibit the signs of strain. Meters 
raced up their scales once more, 
reached the stops and bent. Barney 
shut off the motor, but the strains 
did not stop in the tube. The ap- 
parent overload increased linearly 
and finally the lights went out all 
over the neighborhood once more. 

"Wonderful,” said Barney 
through the darkness. “As a weapon, 
this thing is surpassed by every- 
thing above a fly swatter.” 

“We might be able to cook a 
steak with it — if it would take the 
terrific overload,” said Jim. “Or 
we could use it as an insect extermi- 
nator.” 

“We’d do better by putting the 
insect on an anvil and hitting it 
firmly with a five-pound hammer,” 
said Barney. “Then we’d only have 
the anvil and hammer to haul 
around. This thing is like hauling 



ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 



a fifty-thousand-watt radio trans- 
mitter around. Power supplies, 
BFO. tube, meters, tools, and a huge 
truck full of spare fuses for the times 
when we miss the insect. Might 
be good for a central heating sys- 
tem.” 

“Except that a standard electric 
unit is more reliable and consider- 
ably less complicated. You’d have 
to hire a corps of engineers to run 
the tiling.” 

The lights went on again, and the 
attendant in the substation screwed 
the blow-point control tighter. He 
didn’t know it, but his level was 
now above the rating for his station. 
But had he known it he might not 
have cared. . At least, his station 
was once more in operation. 

“Well,” said Barney, getting up 
from the table, “what have we 
missed ?” 

Altas said : “Now your unit is 
operating at its correct level. But, 
son, you’ve missed one thing. It 




is far from efficient. Those two 
leads must be isolated from one an- 
other, Coupling from one to the 
other will lead to losses.” 

“Gosh,” said Than, “I didn’t 
know that.” 

“No, for some reason the books 
assume that the tower engineer has. 
had considerable experience in the 
art. Take it from me, son, there 
are a lot of things that are not in 
the books. Now isolate those leads 
from one another and we’ll go on.” 

“While you’re thinking,” said 
Jim, “I’m going to lockstitch these 
cables together. It’ll make this 
thing less messy.” Jim got a roll 
of twelve-cord from the cabinet and 
began to bind the many supply leads 
into a neat cable. 

Barney watched until the job was 
finished, and then said: “Look, 

chum, let’s try that electric-light 
trick again.” 

They swung the tube around until 
it was in the original position, and 
turned the juice on. Nothing hap- 
pened. 

Barney looked at Jim. and then 
reached out and pointed the big tube 
right at the electric light. 

Nothing happened. 

“Check your anode voltages 
again.” 

“All O. IC.” 

“How about that aligning job?” 

Barney fiddled with the alignment 
screws for minutes, but his original 
setting seemed to be valid. 

“Back to normal,” said Barney. 
“Rip out your cabling.” 

“Huh?” 



LOST ART 



43 



“Sure. You did something. I 
don't know what. But rip it out 
and fan out the leads. There is 
something screwy in the supply 
lines. I’ve been tied up on that one 
before; this thing looks like elec- 
tronics, as we agree, and I’ve had 
occasion to remember coupling 
troubles.” 

“All right,” said Jim, and he re- 
luctantly ripped out his lock-stitch- 
ing. He fanned the leads and they 
tried it again. 

Obediently the light dimmed and 
the wallpaper burned. 

"Here we go again,” said Jim, 
killing the circuits and reaching for 
a small rug to smother the fire. “No 
wonder the Martians had this thing 
out in the middle of the desert. 
D’ye suppose that they were trying 
to find out how it works, too?” 
“Take it easier this time and we’ll 
fan the various leads,” said Barney. 
“There’s something tricky about 
the lead placement.” 

“Half power,” announced Barney. 
“Now, let’s get that sixty cycles.” 
The light dimmed slightly and a 
sheet of metal placed in front of the 
tube became slightly warm to the 
touch. The plate stopped tire out- 
put of the tube, for the wallpaper 
did not scorch. Jim began to take 
supply line after supply line from 
the bundle of wiring. About half- 
way through the mess he hit the 
critical lead, and immediately the 
light went out completely, and the 
plate grew quite hot. 

“Stop her!” yelled Barney. 
“Why?” 



“How do we know what we’re 
overloading this time?” 

“Do we care?” 

“Sure. Let’s point this thing 
away from that light. Then we 
can hop it up again and try it at 
full power.” 

“What do you want to try?” 

“This energy-absorption thing.” 

“Wanna burn out my motor?” 

“Not completely. This dingbat 
will stop a completely mechanical 
gadget like a clock. It seems to 
draw power from electric lights. It 
stops electromechanical power. I 
wonder just how far it will go to- 
ward absorbing power. And also 
I want to know where the power 
goes.” 

The tube was made to stop the 
clock again. The motor groaned 
under the load put upon it by the 
tube. Apparently the action of the 
tube was similar to a heavy load 
being placed on whatever its end 
happened to point to. Barney picked 
up a small metal block and dropped 
it over the table. 

“Want to see if it absorbs the 
energy of a falling object — Look 
at that!” 

The block fell until it came inside 
of the influence of the tube. Then 
it slowed in its fall and approached 
the table slowly. It did not hit the 
table, it touched and came to rest. 

“What happens if we wind up a 
spring and tie it?” asked Jim. 

They tried it. Nothing hap- 
pened. 

“Works on kinetic energy, not 
potential energy,” said Barney. 

He picked up a heavy hammer 



44 



ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 



and tried to hit the table. “Like 
swinging a club through a tub of 
water,” he said. 

“Be a useful gadget for saving 
the lives of people who are falling,” 
said Jim thoughtfully. 

“Oh, sure. Put it on a truck and 
rush it out to the scene of the sui- 
cide.” 

“No. How about people jumping 
out of windows on account of fires? 
How about having one of the things 
around during a flier-training 
course? Think of letting a safe 
down on one of these beams, or tak- 
ing a piano from the fifth floor of 
an apartment building.” 

“The whole apartment full of fur- 
niture could be pitched out of a win- 
dow,” said Barney. 

“Mine looks that way now,” said 
Jim, “and we’ve only moved a 
couple of times. No, Barney, don’t 
give ’em any ideas.” 

Jim picked up the hammer and 
tried to hit the table. Then, idly, 
he swung the hammer in the direc- 
tion of the tube’s end. 

Barney gasped. In this direction 
there was no resistance. Jim’s 
swing continued, and the look on 
Jim’s face indicated that he was try- 
ing to brake the swing in time to 
keep from hitting the end of the 
tube. But it seemed as though he 
were trying to stop an avalanche. 
The swing continued on and on and 
finally ended when the hammer head 
contacted the end of the tube. 

There was a burst of fire. Jim 
swung right on through, whirling 
around off balance and coming to a 



stop only when he fell to the floor. 
He landed in darkness again. The 
burst of fire emanated from the in- 
sulation as it flamed under the heat 
of extreme overload. 

This time the lights were out all 
over Lincoln Head. The whole city 
was in complete blackout ! 

Candles were found, and they in- 
spected the tube anxiously. It 
seemed whole. But the hammer 
head was missiiig. The handle was 
cut cleanly, on an optically perfect 
surface. 

Where the hammer head went, 
they couldn’t say. But on the op- 
posite wall there was a fracture in 
the plaster that Jim swore hadn’t 
been there before. It extended over 
quite an area, and after some 
thought, Barney calculated that if 
the force of Jim’s hammer blow had 
been evenly distributed over that 
area on the wall, the fracturing 
would have been just about that 
bad. 

“A weapon, all right,” 'said Bar- 
ney. 

“Sure. All you have to do is to 
shoot your gun right in this end 
and the force is dissipated over quite 
an area out of that end. In the 
meantime you blow out all of the 
powerhouses on the planet. If a 
hammer blow can raise such merry 
hell, what do you think the output 
of a sixteen-inch rifle would do? 
Probably stop the planet in its 
tracks. D’ye know what I think?" 

“No, do you?” 

“Barney, I think that we aren’t 
even close as to the operation and 
use of this device.” 



LOST ART 



45 



“For that decision, Jim, you 
should be awarded the Interplane- 
tary Award for Discovery and In- 
vention — posthumously !” 

“So what do we do now?” 

"Dunno. How soon does this 
lighting situation get itself fixed?” 

“You ask me ... I don’t know 
either.” 

“Well, let’s see what we’ve found 
so far.” 

“That’s easy,” said Jim. “It 
might be a weapon, but it don’t 
weap. We might use it for letting 
elevators down easy, except that it 
would be a shame to tie up a room 
full of equipment when the three- 
phase electric motor is so simple. 
We could toast a bit of bread, but 
the electric toaster has been refined 
to a beautiful piece of breakfast 
furniture that doesn't spray off and 
scorch the wallpaper. We could use 
it to transmit hammer blows, or to 
turn out electric lights, but both of 
those things have been done very 
simply; one by means of sending 
the hammerer to the spot, and the 
other by means of turning the 
switch. And then in the last couple 
of cases, there is little sense in turn- 
ing out a light by short circuiting 
the socket and blowing all the fuses. 

“That is the hard way,” smiled 
Bamey r . “Like hitting a telephone 
pole to stop the car, or cutting the 
wings off a plane to return it to 
the ground.” 

“So we have a fairly lucid book 
that describes the entire hook-up of 
the thing except what it’s for. It 
gives not only the use of this device, 
but also variations and replace- 

46 



ments. Could we figure it out by 
sheer deduction?” 

“I don’t see how. The tower is 
in the midst of the Red Desert. 
There is nothing but sand that as- 
says liigh in iron oxide between 
Canalopsis, at the junction of the 
Grand Canal and Lincoln Head. 
Might be hid, of course, just as this 
one was, and we’ll send out a crew 
of expert sub-sand explorers with 
under-surface detectors to cover the 
ground for a few hundred miles in 
any direction from the place where 
we found this. Somehow, I doubt 
that we’ll find much.” 

‘‘And how do you . . . ah, there’s 
the lights again . . . deduce that?” 
asked Jim. 

“This gadget is or was of impor- 
tance to the Martians. Yet in the 
Temple of Science and Industry at 
Canalopsis, there is scant mention 
of the tow'ers.” 

“Not very much, hey?” 

“Very little, in fact. Of course 
the pictographs on the Temple at 
Canalopsis shows one tower between 
what appear two cities. Wavy 
lines run from one city to the tower 
and to the other city. Say! I’ll 
bet a cooky that this is some sort 
of signaling device!” 

“A beam transmitter?” asked Jim 
skeptically. “Seems like a lot of 
junk for just signaling. Especially 
when such a swell job can be done 
with standard radio equipment. A 
good civilization — such as the Mar- 
tians must have had — wouldn’t pid- 
dle around with relay stations be- 
tween two cities less than a couple 
of thousand miles apart. With all 



ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-k'ICTION 



the juice this thing can suck, they’d 
be more than able to hang a straight 
broadcast station and cover halfway 
around the planet as ground-wave 
area. What price relay station ?” 

“Nevertheless, I’m going to tinker 
up another one of these and see if 
it is some sort of signaling equip- 
ment.” 

The door opened and Christine 
Baler entered. She waved a news- 
paper before her brother’s eyes and 
said: “Bov, have you been missing 
it!” 

“What?” asked Barney. 

“Pixies or gremlins loose in Lin- 
coln Head.” 

"Huh-huh. Bead it,” said Jim. 

“Just a bunch of flash headlines. 
Fire on Manley Avenue. Three 
planes had to make dead-tube land- 
ings in the center of the city ; power 
went dead for no good reason for 
about ten minutes. Faqade of the 
City Hall caved in. Power, plants 
running wild all over the place. Ten 
thousand dollars’ worth of electrical 
equipment blown out. Automobiles 
stalled in rows for blocks.” 

Jim looked at Barney. “Got a 
bear by the tail,” he said. 

“Could be,” admitted Barney. 

“Are you two blithering geniuses 
going to work all night?” asked 
Christine. 

“Nope. We’re about out of ideas. 
Except the one that Barney had 
about the gadget being some sort 
of signaling system.” 

“Why don't you fellows call Don 
Channing? He’s the signaling wiz- 
ard of the Solar System.” 



“Sure, call Channing. Every 
time someone gets an idea, every- 
one says, ‘Call Channing!’ He gets 
called for everything from Boy 
Scout wigwag ideas to super- 
cyclotronic-electron-stream beams to 
contact the outer planets. Based 
upon the supposition that people 
will eventually get there, of course.” 
“Well ?” 

“Well, I . . . we, I mean . . . 
found this thing and we’re jolly well 
going to tinker it out. In spite of 
the fact that it seems to bollix up 
everything from electric lights to 
moving gears. I think we’re guilty 
of sabotage. Facade of the City Hall, 
et cetera. Barney, how long do you 
think it will take to tinker up an- 
other one of these?” 

“Few hours. They're doggoned 
simple things in spite of the fact 
that we can’t understand them. In 
fact, I’m of the opinion that the 
real idea would be to make two; 
one with only the front end for re- 
ception, one for the rear end for 
transmission, and the one we found 
for relaying. That’s the natural 
bent, I believe.” 

“Could be. Where are you go- 
ing to cut them?” 

“The transmitter will start just 
before the cathode and the receiver 
will end just after the . , . uh, 
cathode.” 

“Huh?” 

“Obviously the cathode is the 
baby that makes with the end prod- 
uct. She seems to be a total intake 
from the intake end and a complete 
output from the opposite end. 
Right?” 



LOST ART 



4T 



■'Right, but it certainly sounds 
like heresy.” 

"I know,” said Barney thought- 
fully, "but the thing is obviously 
different from anything that we 
know today. Who knows how she 
works ?” 

"I give up.” 

Christine, who had been listening 
in an interested manner, said : "You 
fellers are the guys responsible for 
the ruckus that’s been going on all 
over Lincoln Head?” 

“I’m afraid so.” 

"Well, brother warlocks, unless 
you keep your activities under cover 
until they’re worth mentioning, 
you’ll both be due for burning at 
the stake.” 

“O. K., Chris,” said Jim. "We'll 

not let it out.” 

"But how are you going to tinker 
up that transiiiitter-relay-receiver 
system ?” 

“We’ll take it from here to Bar- 
ney's place across the avenue and 
into his garage. That should do it.” 

“O. K., but now I’m going to 
bed.” 

"Shall we knock off, too?” asked 
Jim. 

"Yup. Maybe we’ll dream a good 

thought.” 

"So long then. We’ll leave the 
mess as it is. No use cleaning up 
now, we’ll only have to mess it up 
again tomorrow with the same 

junk.” 

“And I'll have that — or those — 
other systems tinkered together by 
tomorrow noon. That’s a promise,” 
said Barney. “And you,” he said 

4* 



to Christine, "will operate the relay 
station.” 

Altas said to Than : "Now that 
your system is balanced properly, 
and we have proved the worth of 
this tube as a replacement, we shall 
take it to the roof and install it. 
The present tube is about due for 
retirement.” 

"I’ve done well, then?” asked 
Than. 

"Considering all, you've done ad- 
mirably. But balancing the device 
in the tower, and hooked into the 
circuit as an integral part is another 
thing. Come, Than. W e shall close 
the line for an hour whilst replacing 
the tube.” 

“Is that permissible?” 

“At this time of the night the 
requirements are small. No dam- 
age will be done ; they can get along 
without us for an hour. In fact, 
at this time of night, only the peo- 
ple who are running the city will 
know that we are out of service. 
And it is necessary that the tube 
be maintained at full capability. We 
can not chance a weakened tube; 
it might fail when it is needed the 
most.” 

Than carried the tube to the top 
of the tower, and Altas remained 
to contact the necessary parties con- 
cerning the shut-off for replace- 
ment purposes. He followed Than 
to the top after a time and said: 
“Now disconnect the old tube and 
put it on the floor. We shall re- 
place the tube immediately, but it 
will be an hour before it is properly 
balanced again.” 



ASTOUNDING SCI ENCE- FI CTION 



It was not long before Thau had 
the tube connected properly. “Now,” 
said Altas, “turn it on one-tenth 
power and we shall align it.” 

“Shall I use the meters?" 

“I think it best. This requires 
perfect alignment now. We've much 
power and considerable distance, 
and any losses will create great 
amounts of heat.” 

“All right." said Than. He left 
the tower top to get the meters. 

Barney Carroll spoke into a con- 
veniently placed microphone. “Are 
you ready?” he asked. 

“Go ahead," said Christine. 

“We're waiting,” said Jim. 

“You’re the bird on the trans- 
mitter," said Barney to Jim. "You 
make with the juice." 

Power rheostats were turned up 
gingerly, until Jim shouted to stop. 
His shout was blotted out by cries 
from the other two. They met in 
Barney’s place to confer. 

“What’s cooking?" asked Jim. 

“The meters are all going crazy 
in my end,” said Barney. "I seem 
to be sucking power out of every- 
thing in line with my tube.” 

“The so-called relay station is 
firing away at full power and doing 
nothing but draining plenty of power 
from the line," complained Chris- 
tine. 

“And on my end, I was begin- 
ning to scorch the wallpaper again. 
I don’t understand it. With no 
receiver-end, how can I scorch wall- 
paper ?’’ 

“Ask the Martians. They know.” 

“You ask ’em. What shall we 



do, invent a time machine and go 
back sixty centuries?” 

“Wish we could,” said Barney. 
“I’d like to ask the bird that left 
this textbook why they didn’t clarify 
it more.” 

“Speaking of Don Channing 
again,” said Jim, “I’ll bet a hat that 
one of his tube-replacement manuals 
for the big transmitters out on 
Venus Equilateral do not even men- 
tion that the transmitter requires a 
receiver before it is any good. We 
think we're modern. We are, and 
we never think that some day some 
poor bird will try to decipher our 
technical works. Why, if Volta 
himself came back and saw the most 
perfect machine ever invented — the 
transformer — he’d shudder. No 
connection between input and out- 
put, several kinds of shorted loops 
of wire; and instead of making a 
nice simple electromagnet, we short 
the lines of force and on top of that 
we use a lot of laminations piled 
on top of one another instead of a 
nice, soft iron core. We completely 
short the input, et cetera, but how 
do we make with a gadget like 
that?” 

“I know. We go on expecting 
to advance. We forget the simple 
past. Remember the lines of that 
story : ‘How does one chip the flint 
to make the best arrowhead?’ I 
don’t know who wrote it any more 
than I know how to skin a boar, 
but we do get on without making 
arrowheads or skinning boars or 
trimming bircb-bark canoes.” 

“All right, but there’s still this 
problem.” 



LOST ART 



49 



"Remember how we managed to 
align this thing? I wonder if it 
might not take another alignment 
to make it work as a relay.” 

"Could be,” said Jim. “I’ll try 
it. Christine, you work these 
screws at the same time we do, and 
make the current come out as low 
as we can.” 

They returned to their stations 
and began to work on the alignment 
screws. Jim came out first on the 
receiver. Giristinc was second on 
the transmitter, while Barney fum- 
bled for a long time with the relay 
tube. 

Then Christine called : “Fellows, 
my meter readings are climbing up 
again. Shall I diddle?” 

“Wait a minute,” said Barney. 
"That means I’m probably taking 
power out of that gadget you have 
in there. Leave ’em alone.” 

He fiddled a bit more, and then 
Jim called: "Whoa, Nellie. "Some- 
one just lost me a millimeter. She 
wound up on the far end.” 

“Hm-m-m,” said Barney, “so 
we’re relaying.” 

“Go ahead,” said Jim. "I’ve got 
a ten-ampere meter on here now.” 
Barney adjusted his screws some 
more. 

“W’ait a minute,” said Jim. “I’m 
going to shunt this meter up to a 
hundred amps.” 

"What?” yelled Barney. 

“Must you yell ?” asked Christine 
ruefully. “These phones are plenty 
uncomfortable without some loud- 
mouthed bird screaming.” 

“Sorry, but a hundred amps . . . 



•whoosh! What have we got here, 
anyway ?” 

“Yeah,” said Christine. "I was 
about to say that my input meter 
is running wild again.” 

“Gone?” 

"Completely. You shouldn’t have 
hidden it behind that big box. I 
didn’t notice it until just now, but 
she’s completely gone.” 

“I’ll be over. I think we’ve got 
something here.” 

An hour passed, during which 
nothing of any great importance 
happened. By keying the transmit- 
ter tube, meters in the receiver tube 
were made to read in accordance. 
Then they had another conclave. 

"Nothing brilliant,” said Jim. 
“We could use super-output voice 
amplifiers and yell halfway across 
the planet if we didn’t have radio. 
We can radio far better than this 
cockeyed system of signaling.” 

“We might cut the power.” 

"Or spread out quite a bit. f 
still say, however, that this is no 
signaling system.” 

“It works like one.” 

"So can a clothesline be made to 
serve as a transmitter of intelli- 
gence. But it’s prime function is 
completely different.” 

“S’pose we have a super-clothes- 
line here?” asked Christine. 

“The way that hammer felt last 
night, I’m not too sure that this 
might not be some sort of tractor 
beam,” said Jim. 

“Tractor beams are mathemati- 
cally impossible.” 

“Yeah, and they proved conclu- 



oo 



astounding science-fiction 



siveiy that a bird cannot fly,” said 
Jim. "That was before they found 
the right kind of math. Up until 
Gerk Maxwell’s time, radio was 
mathematically impossible. Then he 
discovered the electromagnetic equa- 
tions, and we're squirting signals 
across the Inner System every day. 
And when math and fact do not 
agree, which changes ?” 

"The math. Galileo proved that. 
Aristotle said that a heavy stone will 
fall faster. Then Galileo changed 
the math of that by heaving a couple 
of boulders off the Leaning Tower. 
But what have we here?” 

“Has anyone toyed with the 
transmission of power?” 

"Sure. A lot of science-fiction 
writers have their imaginary planets 
crisscrossed with transmitted 
power. Some broadcast it, some 
have it beamed to the consumer. 
When they use planes, they have 
the beam coupled to an object-finder 
so as to control the direction of the 
beam. I prefer the broadcasting, 
myself. It uncomplicates the struc- 
ture of the tale.” 

"I mean actually?” 

"Oh, yes. But the losses are ter- 
rific. Useful power transmission is 
a minute percentage of the total out- 
put of the gadget. Absolutely im- 
practical, especially when copper 
and silver are so plentiful to string 
along the scenery on steel towers. 
No good.” 

"But look at this cockeyed thing. 
Giristine puts in a couple of hun- 
dred amps ; I take them off my end. 
Believe it or not, the output meter 
at my end was getting a lot more 



soup than I was pouring in.” 

"And my gadget was not taking 
anything to speak of,” said Barney. 

"Supposing it was a means of 
transmitting power. How on Mars 
did they use a single tower there 




in the middle of the Red Desert? 
We know there was a Martian city 
at Canalopsis, and another one not 
many miles from Lincoln Head. 
Scribbled on the outer cover of this 
book is the legend : ‘Tower Station, 
Red Desert,’ and though the Mar- 



LO.ST ART 



<1 



tians didn’t call this the ‘Red Des- 
ert,’ the terminology will suffice for 
nomenclature." 

“Well?” asked Jim. 

“You notice they did not say: 
‘Station No. 1,’ or ‘3’ or 7.’ That 
means to me that there was but 
one.” 

“Holy Smoke! Fifteen hundred 
miles with only one station? On 
Mars the curvature of ground would 
put such a station below the elec- 
trical horizon — ” Jim thought that 
one over for a minute and then said : 
“Don’t tell me they bent the beam ?’’ 
“Either they did that or they 
heated up the sand between," said 
Barney cryptically. “It doesn’t 
mind going through nonconducting 
walls, but a nice, fat ground . . . 
blooey, or I miss my guess. That’d 
he like grounding a high line.” 
“You’re saying that they did bend 
— Whoosh, again !" 

“What was that alignment prob- 
lem? Didn’t we align the deflect- 
ing anodes somehow?” 

“Yeah, but you can’t bend the 
output of a cathode ray tube ex- 
ternally of the deflection plates.” 
“But this is not electron-beam 
stuff,” objected Barney. “This is 
as far ahead of cathode-ray tubes 
as they are ahead of the Indian sig- 
nal drum or the guy who used to 
run for twenty-four miles from 
Ghent to Aix.” 

“That one was from Athens to 
Sparta,” explained Christine, “the 
Ghent to Aix journey was a-horse- 
back, and some thousand-odd years 
after.” 

“Simile’s still good,” said Barney. 



“There’s still a lot about this I do 
not understand.” 

“A masterpiece of understate- 
ment, if I ever heard one,” laughed 
Jim. “Well, let’s work on it from 
that angle. Come on, gang, to 
horse !” 

“Now,” said Altas, “you will find 
that the best possible efficiency is 
obtained when the currents in these 
two resistances are equal and op- 
posite in direction. That floats the 
whole tube on the system, and 
makes it possible to run -the tube 
without any external power source. 
It requires a starter-source for 
aligning and for standby service, 
and for the initial surge; then it is 
self-sustaining. Also the in-phase 
voltage can not better be obtained 
than by exciting the phasing anode 
with some of the main-line power. 
That must always be correctly 
phased. We now need the fre- 
quency generator no longer, and by 
increasing the power rheostat to 
full, the tube will take up the load. 
Watch the meters, and when they 
read full power, you may throw the 
cut-over switch and make the tube 
self-sustaining. Our tower will 
then be in perfect service, and you 
and I may return to our home be- 
low.” 

Than performed the operations, 
and then they left, taking the old 
tube with them. 

And on Terra, Sargon of Akkad 
watched ten thousand slaves carry 
stone for one of his public build- 
ings. He did not know that on one 
of the stars placed in the black bowl 



’•i 



ASTOUNDING SCIENCE FICTION 



of the evening sky for his personal 
benefit, men were flinging more 
power through the air than the total 
output of all of his slaves combined. 
Had he been told, he would have 
had the teller beheaded for lying be- 
cause Sargon of Akkad couldn’t 
possibly have understood it — 

“You know, we’re missing a bet,” 
said Jim. “This in-phase business 
here. Why shouldn't we hang a bit 
of the old wall-socket juice in here?” 

“That might be the trick,” said 
Barney. 

Jim made the connections, and 
they watched the meters read up and 
up and up — and from the street be- 
low them a rumbling was heard. 
Smoke issued from a crevasse in 
the pavement, and then with a roar, 
the street erupted and a furrow 



three feet wide and all the way 
across the street from Jim Baler’s 
residence to Barney Carroll’s garage 
lifted out of the ground. It blew 
straight up and fell back, and from 
the bottom of the furrow the smol- 
dering of burned and tortured wir- 
ing cast a foul smell. 

“Wham I" said Barney, looking at 
the smoking trench. “What was 
that ?” 

“I think we’ll find that it was the 
closest connection between our 
places made by the Electric Co.,” 
said Jim. 

“But what have we done?” 

“I enumerate,” said Christine, 
counting off on her fingers. "We’ve 
blasted in the faqade of the City Hall. 
We’ve caused a couple of emergency 
flier-landings within the city limits. 
We’ve blown fuses and circuit 




YOU BET* / USE 



CAN/ TAKE YOU 

AT FACE VALUE /[STAR BLADES / 



LOST AKT 



08 




breakers all the way from here to 
the main powerhouse downtown. 
We’ve stalled a few dozen automo- 
biles. We've torn or burned or cut 
the end off of one hammer and have 
fractured the wall with it , . . 
where did that go, anyway, the 
hammerhead? We’ve burned wall- 
paper. We’ve run our electric bill 
up to about three hundred dollars, 
I’ll bet. We’ve bunged up a dozen 
meters. And now we’ve ripped up 
a trench in the middle of the street.” 

^‘Somewhere in this set-up, there 
is a return circuit.” said Jim 
thoughtfully. “We’ve been taking 
power out of the line, and I've been 
oblivious of the fact that a couple 
of hundred amperes is too high to 
get out of our power line without 
trouble. What we’ve been doing is 
taking enough soup out of the public 
utility lines to supply the losses only. 
The power we’ve been seeing on our 
meters is the build-up, recircu- 
lated !” 

“Huh ?” 

“Sure. Say we bring an amp in 
from the outside and shoot it across 
the street. It goes to the wires 
and comes back because of some 
electrical urge in our gadgets here, 
and then goes across the street in- 
phase with the original. That makes 
two amps total crossing our beam. 
The two come back and we have 
two plus two. Four come back, 
and we double again and again until 
the capability of our device is at 
saturation. All we have to do is to 
find the ground-return and hang a 
load in there. We find the trans- 

THE 



mitter-load input, and supply that 
with a generator. Brother, we can 
beam power all the way from here 
to Canalopsis on one relay tower!” 

Barney looked at his friend. 
“Could be.” 

“Darned right. What other item 
can you think of that fits this tower 
any better? We’ve run down a 
dozen ideas, but this works. We 
may be arrested for wrecking Lin- 
coln Head, but we’ll get out as soon 
as this dingbat hits the market. 
Brother, what a find!” 

“Fellows, I think you can make 
your announcement now,” smiled 
Christine.. “They won’t burn you at 
the stake if you can bring electric 
power on a beam of pure nothing. 
This time you’ve hit the jackpot !” 

It is six thousand Terran Years 
since Sargon of Akkad held court 
that was lighted by torch. It is six 
thousand years, Terran, since Than 
and Altas replaced the link in a 
power system that tied their cities 
together. 

It is six thousand years since the 
beam tower fell into the Red Desert 
and the mighty system of beamed 
power became lost as an art. But 
once again the towers dot the plains, 
not only of Mars, but of Venus and 
Terra, too. 

And though they are of a lan- 
guage understood by the peoples of 
three worlds, the manuals of in- 
struction would be as cryptic to 
Than as his manual was to Barney 
Carroll and Jim Baler. 

People will never learn. 

END. 



54 



ASTOUNDING SCIENCE FICTION 




Fricassee 

in Four Dimensions 



by F. Schuyler Miller 

He was a remarkable cook — and remarkable in a number 
oj other ways for that matter. But the most remarkable 
dish he cooked up was stew that wouldn't stay cooked! 



Illustrated by Orban 



I ask you, how was I to know? 
Whatever happens, it’s my fault. 

If I hadn’t taken this job, we 
wouldn't be living in a town where 
cooks are gold plated, set with dia- 

FRICASSEE IN FOUR DIMENSIONS 



monds, and born with platinum back 
teeth. If I liadn’t been a big shot 
in a small way, Eleanor wouldn’t 
have been asked to do the things 
she does in Red Cross, Civilian De- 
ss 




fense, the Bureau of Family Wel- 
fare. and the Girl Scouts. And, if 
I hadn’t been fool enough to talk at 
dinner about the wages women were 
getting down at the plant, Doris 
would still be in the kitchen instead 
of behind a lathe. 

I heard about it most of the night 
and all through breakfast. Eleanor 
had parked the kids next door and 
gone to some committee meeting 
when I came home, so I grabbed 
my rod and boots and went out to 
catch a couple of fish. 

The best trout stream in Madi- 
sonville is the old Brickyard Creek, 
and the best part of it is down back 
of the railroad yard, where you’d 
no more expect to find trout than — 
well, than a cook. I had two in my 
creel and had hooked a third when 
I spotted him. 

Where the creek runs into the 
river, just east of the railroad 
bridge, there is a hobo jungle. As 
a matter of fact, the way I learned 
about the creek was watching 
tramps fry a couple of twelve-inch 
beauties, at a time when the boys 
down at the office were using plas- 
tic surgery to stretch their puny 
catch over the limit. This fellow 
looked like the average tramp, and 
I didn’t pay much attention to him. 
He had a little fire going, and was 
cooking something over the coals. 

The third fish was just about pan 
size, and I thought he might like 
it. I can cook in the open well 
enough to eat what I put together, 
but I wasn’t going to risk peace 
and sanity by taking a mess of fish 
home to Eleanor when she had just 

s« 



lost the best cook we ever had. 

Close up, he looked too well 
dressed to be a tramp — more like 
a white-collar man in old clothes, 
I-Ie had a skillet of some shiny white 
metal, and whatever he was cooking 
smelled like heaven. He looked up 
when he heard me climbing the 
bank. He was young — still in his 
thirties, I thought. I wondered why 
he wasn’t in the army or a war job. 

“Hello," I said, “got any use for 
a fish?” I held up the biggest of 
the three trout. 

He smiled. It was a winning 
sort of grin. He might be a draft- 
dodger — a lot of these hobos have 
never bothered to register — but I 
wasn’t going to turn him in. 
“Thanks,” he said. “I like fish. 
I’ll have it for breakfast.” 

I handed him the fish. What he 
did I still don’t know. There was 
a sort of twist of his wrist, and the 
trout was inside out. He flicked 
here and there with a shining little 
knife and deposited its plumbing in 
a hole he had dug beside the fire, 
with a neat stopper of turf beside it. 
Then twist — zip — and the trout was 
inside out again. He hung it on a 
bush, saw that I was watching him 
bug-eyed, and turned bright red. 

“Sorry,” he mumbled. “Little 
trick I picked up from a feller in 
Yuma. Indian. It — bothers peo- 
ple.” 

I sat down on a log across the fire 
from him and filled my pipe. The 
aroma of the stuff in the skillet 
wafted my way, mixed with the in- 
cense of hickory coals. I’d never 
smelled anything quite like it. I 

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 



motioned with my pipestem. 

“What’s that?” I asked. “Gou- 
lash?” 

He grinned again. "Sort of,” he 
said. “Just something I cooked up. 
Join me? 1 ’ 

I suppose I'd been angling for 
that invitation from the moment I 
smelled the stuff he was cooking. 
I turned him down once, .in case he 
was hungrier than I thought, and 
then accepted with pleasure. His 
pack was hanging on a tree behind 
him, and he twisted around on his 
haunches and reached into it — and 
turned back with a little box in his 
hand. It was made of the same 
white metal as the skillet, not more 
than six inches square, but out of 
it he produced plates, forks, knives, 
and cups. He raked aside the coals 
and there was an odd flasklike con- 
traption that squirted hot coffee 
when he did something to it. It all 
happened so quickly that I was eat- 
ing before I realized that he hadn’t 
opened the box. 

The goulash was great. The meat 
was game — pheasant, I supposed — 
but it had a tang to it that was 
brand-new. The herbs he’d used 
vyith it were really something ! Man, 
was he a cook ! 

His coffee decided me. It tasted 
the way freshly ground coffee 
smells. I’d never tasted coffee like 
it. I polished my plate with a heel 
of brownish bread and leaned back 
against my log. 

"Look,” I blurted, "why aren’t 
you working?” 

It wasn’t the kind of question to 



ask a man who has just fed you on 
manna straight from heaven, but he 
didn’t seem to mind. He just 
grinned that friendly grin. 

“No papers,” he said. “No birth 
certificate. No school record. No 
nothing. They won’t have me. Nei- 
ther will the army. My innards are 
— funny.” 

Funny ! That was a high in un- 
derstatement. 1 wish I knew what 
doctor examined him. I wish I 
knew what they put down on his 
record. I wish I’d known then — 
“Do you want to live this kind 
of life?” I persisted. “Don’t you 
ever make plans?” 

He eyed me thoughtfully. “I 
like it,” he admitted, "but I like 
other things, too.” 

“Have .you ever thought about 
cooking?” I demanded. “As a job, 
I mean? You don’t need papers 
for that. And cooks are scarcer 
than white-wall tires these days. 
I’ll pay you all you can get at a ma- 
chine and your keep if you’ll cook 
for me and turn out stuff like that.” 
He looked at me. He looked up 
at the sky, and the trees moving in 
the wind, and the clouds going si- 
lently over. He looked at the brook, 
and the pattern of eddies where it 
swirled past the abutment of the 
bridge. I guess he liked all that — 
a lot. Then he looked back at me. 
“All right,” he said. 

We beat Eleanor home. He put 
his pack in Doris’ room off the 
kitchen and began to look tilings 
over while I went after the kids. 
They're three and nine, girl ami boy, 
Pat and Mike. Pat scrambled un- 



FRICASSEE IN FOUR DIMENSIONS 



67 



der my arm the moment I opened 
the front door and headed straight 
for the kitchen. Doris always had 
cookies for her, in spite of the strict 
rules about between-meals snacks 
that Eleanor was trying to enforce. 
She stopped in the kitchen door and 
stared. She twisted her head around 
on her shoulders like an owl’s and 
looked back at me. 

“Who’s he?” she asked. 

I didn’t know. We hadn’t both- 
ered about names. I looked the 
question back at him, over Pat's 
head. He was fussing around the 
stove, still in his checked shirt and 
faded breeches. He hesitated a 
minute, looking soberly at the three 
of us. 

“Smith,” he said suddenly. “Yes 
— Smith. Smitty.” 

“He’s Smitty,” I told the kids. 
“He's going to cook for us. Doris 
went away.” 

“No cookies?” Pat was set for 
tears. I tousled her head. “Smitty 
will have cookies for you tomor- 
row,” I told her. “But don’t let 
Mummy hear you asking for them." 

Smitty had a queer look in his 
eye. “Wait a minute,” he said. “I 
think maybe — ” He turned his 

back. I couldn’t see what it was 
he was doing. When he turned 
around there was a pan of cookies 
in his hand — fresh cookies, hot from 
the oven. I could smell them, and 
so could the kids. They stampeded 
across the kitchen, but he lifted the 
pan above their heads. He looked 
at me and I nodded. He waded 
over to the table and made them sit 
down w'hile he shoveled the cookies 

58 



off on a plate. They were a kind 
Eleanor makes, and I’d never seen 
anyone else do them. 

I happened to look at the stove. 
Those cookies were hot — fresh out 
of the oven — but the oven wasn’t 
on. Smitty caught me staring and 
turned red again. 

“I — they were — here,” he said. 
“I just happened to find them.” 

There was something screwy 
about the set-up, but it was none 
of my business when the guy could 
cook the way he could. I assembled 
the kids and the cookies and herded 
them all out of the kitchen. I swiped 
one from Mike. It was hot and it 
was Eleanor’s recipe. 

Eleanor, when she got home and 
crawled out of her uniform, wasn’t 
so certain that she wanted a young 
man in the kitchen. Her objections 
were one part prejudice against men 
in women’s work, one part convic- 
tion that anyone of draft age should 
be shooting someone or earning a 
lot of overtime, and one part won- 
dering what the neighbors would 
think of a handsome youngster like 
Smitty around the house. I made 
him come in and explain about his 
insides, I let his cooking speak for 
itself, and she decided to let the 
neighbors gab. We had us a cook. 

We had a lot more than that. W e 
had a handyman, bartender, and 
nursemaid. We had a chauffeur, 
tailor and field hand. Smitty had 
gadgets in that little box of his that 
would get into anything and do 
whatever needed doing, tie could 
see the source of trouble in a balky 

ASTOUNDING SCI ENCE-FICTI ON 



gas line or a fritzed lead wire and 
knew instinctively what to do about 
it. The kids took to him and he 
to them like wasps to molasses. He 
patched their pants and did their 
homework — or made them do it. 
He’d been around. He knew how 
people looked in Surabaya and 
Guadalcanal, and what they ate for 
dinner, and how to cook up messes 
that smelled and looked and tasted 
the way their food did. When Mike 
was studying Arabs, he had Arab 
stew and ate it with his right hand 
the way an Arab would while we all 
looked on and envied. When Pat 
was told a story about Eskimos she 
had a chunk of frozen blubber to 
chew on. and for some unknown rea- 
son she didn’t heave all over the 
floor. He could do tricks with num- 
bers that made aritlunetic seem a 
little less like something the Gestapo 
had thought up in a sour moment. 
He could take spots out of things 
that had never had spots taken 
out. And boy — could he cook ! 

I was afraid there was going to 
be trouble that first night. Eleanor 
went out into the kitchen after din- 
ner and spied the cookie tin on the 
table. She grunted. That’s bad. 

“Where did that come from?” she 
demanded. “It’s the one I lost last 
week. The one that just vanished 
into thin air — cookies and all. I 
punished Mike for taking it.” 

Smitty was looking uneasy. “I 
. , . well ... I found it,” he said 
lamely. “It was — around.” 

Eleanor didn’t swallow that. She 
knows a guilty look when she sees 
one. I figured, and I guess she did, 

FRICASSEE IN FOUR DIMENSIONS 



that he might have sneaked in and 
swiped the thing and had it with 
him when I picked him up. She 
didn't know about the hot cookies. 
By the grace of God, Pat picked 
that moment to fall down the front 
stairs again. She does it regularly, 
and she never hurts herself, but she 
howls like a banshee with boils. 
Eleanor went charging out to do 
what needed to be done, and I gave 
Smitty a long, relieved look. 

“Take it easy,” I wanted him. 
“No magic. No miracles. Just 

good, plain cooking — plain enough 
so it don’t make her jealous and 
good enough so’s she can boast 
about it. Then she’ll leave you 
alone and you can run things out 
here pretty much as you please. 
Kapish ?’ 

He grinned. He made me an “O” 
with his fingers. He turned on the 
hot water in the sink and began to 
roll up his sleeves. He was in. 

I’m busy and so was Eleanor. 
She soon learned that Smitty could 
do anything with the children, and 
since she never knew that I was 
paying him as much as a first-class 
mechanic, she had no scruples about 
letting him do more than he was 
paid for. She took on a couple 
more committees, Mike began to get 
better marks in school — though he 
occasionally had a little difficulty ex- 
plaining where he got the authentic 
but lively information in his an- 
swers — and Pat beamed and grew 
fat. We were a happy family. 

I don’t know exactly when it be- 
gan to get too good to be true. It 

&9 



started with the kids, of course. 
They were always with Smitty, .in 
and out of the kitchen, tagging him 
around the garden, asking crazy 
questions and getting serious an- 
swers. I’ll never forget the morning 
I came down for breakfast and 
found Mike juggling eggs. Eleanor, 
praise be, was in bed with a head- 
ache. He had four of them, tossing 
them up and catching them expertly 
as if he’d been doing it for years. 
My slippers rapped on the hardwood 
floor and the first egg went astray. 
I shut my eyes. Pop — pop — pop — 
it was like Ping-pong balls falling. 
I opened my eyes and reached for 
Mike. He dodged. I knew why in 
a moment. The eggs were empty. 

Mike grinned at me warily. It 
was a lot like Smitty’s grin. He 
held up a fifth egg. “See ?” he said. 
I took it. It was light — nothing 
but the shell. But there wasn’t a 
break in the shell. I crushed it in 
my fingers. It was empty, all right. 

“What happened to the egg?” I 
asked. I don't like my kids know- 
ing things I don’t — not things like 
that. 

Mike pointed to the table. We 
were having scrambled eggs. 
“There,” he said. “It’s how Smitty 
empties them.” 

I opened my mouth to put him 
back a notch. After all, there’s a 
limit to what a parent is supposed 
to take from his offspring. But I 
remembered the fish — and the cook- 
ies — and let sleeping dogs lie. 

“What else does Smitty do?” I 
asked cautiously. 

Mike considered. “Weell-1,” he 



said, “he don’t use a can opener. 
It’s like with the eggs — he just 
empties ’em out. And he don’t — • 
doesn’t — always open the refrigera- 
tor when he takes stuff out.” 

I thought I knew that one. We’d 
had trouble before, teaching the 
kids to close the refrigerator door. 
Smitty wasn't goffig to be a bad 
example if I could help it. 

“You tell Smitty,” I said severely, 
“that the door is put on a refrigera- 
tor to keep the heat out and the cold 
in. It’s made to be kept closed. 
That goes for him as well as you.” 

Pat giggled and Mike laughed out 
loud. “I don’t mean that,” he said 
scornfully. “The door’s closed. He 
just reaches in without opening it, 
and gets stuff. It’s a magic trick 
— like when he walks through the 
wall.” 

Pat verified that. “It’s funneee!” 
she squealed. 

My head was going around in 
involutes or something, and I was 
thanking the saints and apostles that 
the head of the house was safe up- 
stairs. I remembered the time Bill 
Travers had tried parlor tricks at a 
bridge party and smashed one of 
our best crystal goblets. If Eleanor 
ever found out that Smitty was 
teaching the kids that kind of stuff, 
she’d blow high, wide, and very, 
very handsome. 

I took Mike by the shoulder in a 
man-to-man sort of way. After all, 
he was nine-going-on-ten and we 
both had to live with his mother. I 
put a little parental authority into 
my voice, too, just so there’d be no 
misunderstanding about w'hat I was 



60 



ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 



driving at. “Look, pal,” I said, 
"you know as well as I do that 
mother doesn’t go for monkey busi- 
ness around the house. If Smitty 
shows you tricks, you see to it that 
they stay in the kitchen or outdoors. 
Not in here. Kapish?” 

He grinned — Smitty’s grin. He 
gave me the "O.” The tricks would 
stay in their place and we’d all live 
happy ever after. 

All, that is, but yours truly. For- • 
tunately I have capable secretaries, 
who could probably do as well with- 
out me as with me to bother them. 
Eggs and fish and cans of beans 
went mulling around inside my skull 
like suds down the bathtub drain, 
and Smitty, grinning like a clown, 
danced in and out among them with 
Pat and Mike perched on either 
shoulder juggling shining skillets. 
Halfway through the afternoon the 
phone rang. It was Smitty, and he 
sounded worried. 

"Hey, boss,” he said,- “it’s the kid. 
Pat. She's gone.” 

I felt the bottom go out of my 
stomach. I guess I said something 
— I don’t know what. Smitty cut 
in again. 

"Look, boss,” he said, “it isn’t 
that bad. 1 know where she is, and 
I’m going after her. I just wanted 
to tell you, in case I don't have din- 
ner ready in time.” 

There was a click and a buzz. 
He’d hung up. 

They tell me I walked out of the 
office like a zombie. By the time 
I got to the stairs I’d started to run. 
The elevator girl yelled at me, but 



I didn’t hear her. If my mind had 
been working, I suppose I’d have 
hailed a taxi or gone round the cor- 
ner for my carj^ut all I could think 
of was getting home and getting 
there fast. It’s nearly two miles 
and it took me twenty minutes. 

The moment I opened the front 
door the emptiness of the place 
caught at me. Pat’s old woolly dog 
was on the bottom step of the stairs; 
I picked it up. The gas was on un- 
der one of Smitty’s, pots and it was 
bubbling gently ; I turned it off. W e 
wouldn’t need it. They were gone. 

I went from one room to the 
other, searching automatically. No 
Pat. No Smitty. In my normal 
senses I might have reasoned that 
if he’d said he was going after her, 
they’d both be somewhere else. I 
wasn’t reasoning. And then in the 
midst of it all the front door creaked 
open. 

I heard it from upstairs in the 
nursery, and I was halfway down 
before I saw who it was. It was 
Mike, home from school. He’s a 
sensitive kid, and I guess he saw 
what was in my face. He had a 
couple of books under his arm, and 
he put them carefully down on the 
hall table before he came to me. He 
let me put my hand on his hair. 

“Pat’s gone,” I told him gently. 

He ducked away from me. 
“Where?” he asked. “Tell Smitty 
— he’ll get her.” 

“I don’t know.” I guess it must 
have sounded pretty childish to a 
fellow who’s ready for the sixth 
grade. “He’s gone, too. I guess 
he went after her.” 



KKICAS9EB IN FOUH DIMENSIONS 



61 



Mike wasn’t scared ; he was dis- 
gusted. “Aw-w-w !" he protested. 
“I told her not to.” 

Somehow that got through to me. 
I grabbed his shoulder. I guess 
maybe I hurt him. “What did you 
tell her?” I demanded. “Where is 
she? Do you know?” 

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a kid 
Mike’s age who was embarrassed. 
They must get that way, consider- 
ing some of the antics their parents 
go through, but I’d just never seen 
it. Mike was embarrassed now, and 
he looked a little guilty, too. 

“She’s all right,” he insisted. 
“Smitty knows. He’ll get her.” 
He tried to squirm out of my grip. 

“Look here, pal,” I told him. 
“This is no game. Pat’s only three, 
and a lot can happen to her before 
anyone catches up with her. I want 
to know where she is.” 

He could tell I meant it, but it 
came hard for him. Pie wouldn’t 
lie and he didn’t want to tell me. 
“Well,” he finally admitted, “I guess 
she went over there.” 

“Over where?” It meant noth- 
ing to me. “Over to the woods?” 
We'd been on a picnic the Sunday 
before, across the river in a grove 
of pines. 

Now the ice was broken, Mike 
was willing enough to talk. “Gee, 
no,” he scoffed. “Over there — 
where Smitty goes.” He waved his 
arm vaguely. “Like this.” 

He hitched up his pants and be- 
gan to count. Then, in time to the 
count, he began to sway back and 
forth from one foot to the other. 
Back and forth, back, and forth — 

82 



then suddenly he twisted queerly 
on his heel — and vanished. 

I thought Mike had ducked 
through the portieres into the living 
room. He wasn’t there. I thought 
maybe he had slipped out of the 
front door. He wasn’t on the porch. 
I called to him: “Mike!” but there 
was only that empty stillness. Then 
I heard footsteps in the kitchen. I 
flung open the door, and there he 
was — dripping wet — soaked from 
head to foot and muddy to the knees. 

“Gee, pop.” he told me breath- 
lessly, “I fell in. I forgot about the 
creek. We better do it in here.” 

I was getting angry. I’d had 
enough of his nonsense. “Do 
what?” I snapped. 

Pie stared at me. “Well, gee — 
go after them! I found Smitty ’s 
tracks in the grass. I’m pretty good 
at following tracks.” 

My brain was spinning. I let 
myself down slowly on the kitchen 
stool. “Look, Mike,” I said, “let’s 
start over again. Right from the 
beginning. Where’s Pat? Where 
did you go? Where did you find 
Smitty's tracks?" 

He stood there in his puddle, 
scowling at me. Why I should have 
called upon a member of the fifth 
grade, nine-going-on-ten, to explain 
the fourth dimension is something 
only a student of parents can an- 
swer. I did, though, and he tried, 
He was very patient about it, on 
the whole. 

“Gee, pop,” he complained “I told 
you once.. It’s — over there. A 
place — like in fairyland maybe. 

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 



Only there ain’t . . . aren’t any fair- 
ies in it. It’s right there all the 
time, only we can’t see it, Smitty 
says. You have to know the secret 
to go there. We watched Smitty do 
it, when he didn’t know we were 
there, and then we tried it. Pat 
learned a lot quicker than I did.” 

Eleanor would never have let it 
go at that. She’d never have lis- 
tened, in the first place. No woman 
would. Her mind would have been 
made up long since, and she’d be 
working on whatever assumption 
she’d settled on. Anything that 
didn’t fit, she'd ignore. And with 
Mike soaked to the skin like that, 
she'd have sent him upstairs to 
change while she called the police. 

I’m a man — Eleanor’s husband — 
Mike’s father. I’d seen him, with 
my own eyes, do a kind of hop- 
scotch twist and vanish. I was will- 
ing to let it go at that. So I took 
him by the shoulders, like a two- 
man conga line, and solemnly mim- 
icked every move he made. We did 
it once, and nothing happened. We 
did it again, and he turned into thin 
air. He came back, and we did it 
again and again, until my skull was 
splitting and I didn’t know which 
way was up. I think that was what 
did it. I think I was so tired that 
all the tension was out of me, and 
I was content to follow through, do- 
ing just what he did. Suddenly I 
knew that I had the pattern — I 
twisted as he did — and we tumbled 
through. 

Through? It was through noth- 
ing. We were outdoors, and we 
weren't in any place I have ever 



seen. Mike had been telling the 
truth: there was an "over there.” 
It was a quiet, green world — a 
sunny meadow with tall green grass, 
a clear little stream, wooded hills 
coming in close. There were flow- 
ers in the grass, but they weren’t 
any kind I had ever seen in the hills 
around Madisonville. The trees 
were trees, but they had different 
shapes. The sky was blue, and it 
had white summer clouds in it, like 
clouds at home. It was just an- 
other world — a good world. . 

Mike was across the creek and 
halfway up the opposite hill. He 
was following a matted trail in the 
grass, and I saw with a stab of 
gladness that there were two trails, 
a little one and a wider one, con- 
verging near the top of the hill. I 
vaulted the creek and hurried after 
him. 

It was nearly sundown when we 
found them. Pat was riding on 
Smitty’s shoulders, clutching some- 
thing to her small stomach and lis- 
tening attentively while he gave her 
the bawling-out of her life. I sup- 
pose I spoiled any effect it may 
have had when I snatched her away 
from him and heaped a garbled mix- 
ture of love and wrath on her 
tousled head. 

The sun was just settling behind 
the farthest hills when we reached 
the spot beside the brook where we 
had popped into this other world. 
Birds that seemed a little like 
thrushes were singing in the forest, 
and something about as big as a 
fox slipped away through the grass 



FRICASSEE IN FOUR DIMENSIONS 



03 



as we came over the hill. Pat and 
Mike went first, slipping through 
with that uncanny wriggle, and then 
it was my turn. And I couldn’t 
do it. 

I tried it alone. I tried it behind 
Smitty. Mike came back to see 
what was holding us up, and I tried 
to follow him again. It was no use. 
Maybe I had regained whatever 
control of my senses I had relin- 
quished that first time. Maybe my 
feet tangled in the grass. Maybe — 
but why go through all that ? I was 
stuck. I couldn’t make it. I was 
marooned — in anotlier world. 

Smitty took the whole thing 
pretty seriously, being adult and 
able to think things through. The 
fact that he could do it easily was 
no help at all, because he admitted 
reluctantly that he’d always been 
able to slip “through,” even as a 
child. He thought his mixed-up 
insides had something to do with 
it, because he could do other things 
like reaching into closed boxes. He’d 
never known that anyone else could 
catch the trick until one day Pat 
followed him. Then he had to 
teach Mike to keep peace in the 
family. 

I asked him where we were, and 
he couldn’t tell me. He thought it 
was another world, coexistent with 
our own, and that we got into it by 
taking some kind of short cut, like 
boring a hole from the outside of 
a hollow globe to the inside and 
creeping through. He’d read some- 
thing about a fourth dimension that 
seemed to fit, but there were some 
writers who seemed to think the 

6 A 



fourth dimension was a place and 
others who plugged for it to be 
time. With him it was all mixed 
up, the two together, because he 
could reach into places or into 
times. He’d snatched that pan of 
cookies out of the past, and he gave 
me a demonstration in which his 
right arm vanished from the shoul- 
der down and reappeared with my 
wallet in its hand. It was my wallet 
because it had my draft card and 
all my other papers in it, but I still 
had its duplicate in my coat pocket. 
Three minutes later the one in my 
pocket evaporated. He claimed 
he’d reached ahead three minutes in 
time and taken it. 

It was well after dark and I was 
beginning to wonder what Eleanor 
would be doing when she found 
that her husband had done the van- 
ishing act. I knew that the kids' 
explanations weren’t going to make 
sense to anybody. Then Mike re- 
appeared, like a light that’s been 
turned on, out of nowhere. Pat 
was hanging onto his hand. 

“Mother phoned,” he announced 
triumphantly. “She won’t be home. 
I told her we were going camping." 

It was as simple as that to the 
nine-year-old intellect. We were 
going camping. It was Friday 
night, and I sometimes took Satur- 
day off when I was pretty well 
caught up on the week’s work. We 
might not be back until Monday 
morning, in time for school, Mike 
had announced to his mother. 

So we camped out. I could see 
that Smitty knew this place pretty 



ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 





V 



well, and I suspected that the chil- 
dren did, too. We went farther up 
the creek, to where it came out of 
the woods, and there under the shel- 
ter of a high, sloping ledge was a 
deep bed of leaves and grass and 
the remains of an old campfire. 
From the way Pat burrowed into 
the leaves in a little cranny behind 
a big stone, and Mike set about 
gathering wood, I gathered that 
they had been here before. 

Smitty went "through” for blan- 
kets, and to lock up the house. The 
night was warm, though, and we 
sat around the fire watching him 
fuss with the gadgets in that pack 
of his. It was the first I’d seen 
those skillets of his since that day 



by the railroad, and I gave them 
the once-over closely. They were 
made of an alloy that was new to 
me, and we see most of them in our 
business. I asked him about it. 
He said it was stuff he’d found in 
another part of this same world, 
in the solid, native state. It had 
some of the properties of gold or 
platinum, but it was lighter and 
harder. 

Both kids were giving him in- 
structions about what they wanted 
to eat, and he admitted that after 
Pat found the way through he’d 
had to take them on fairly frequent 
picnic trips, in return for a promise 
never to come alone. Times when 
we thought they were berrying in 



FRICASSEE IN FOUR DIMENSIONS 



63 



Hanson’s woods, or hiking along 
the hill trail, they had really been 
over here, on the other side of no- 
where, exploring a world where no 
other human foot had, ever walked. 

I wasn’t sold on the looks of the 
meal he put together for us, but we 
ate well. He rummaged around in 
the marsh on the far side of the 
creek and came back with a brown, 
froggy-looking creature that bleated 
like a lamb. He sent Mike to the 
meadow for a bunch of herbs, and 
set Pat to digging with a knife for 
the fat, white roots of a purple- 
flowered plant which grew in pro- 
fusion under the trees at the edge 
of the woods. He went out him- 
self to look for a jellylike fungus, 
bright red and spicy, which we had 
for dessert after roast frog, baked 
roots, and savory herb gravy. The 
way the kids headed for the creek 
with the dishes after we were done 
was a revelation to me ; it was never 
thus when I took them on a camp- 
ing trip. 

Pat, after all, was only three. I 
knew better than to try to put her 
to bed while things were still hap- 
pening, but she'd had a long day, 
and after dinner was over she stole 
away to her nest in the dry leaves. 
When I slipped in with a blanket 
to cover her up, I could see that 
she had something snuggled up un- 
der her chin. As I gently unclasped 
her fingers she stirred in her sleep 
and murmured : “Wabbit.” 

I thought at first that she had 
brought her woolly dog back from 
the house, but the thing’s shape was 
wrong. I took it out to the fire. 

6C 



It was about the size of my two 
fists, and covered with long, silky- 
gray fur like an Angora cat. It 
was warm, and as I held it I could 
feel a pulse beating in it, but it had 
no eyes, no ears, no features of any 
kind. Whatever it was, it was no 
rabbit. 

It puzzled Smitty, too. The crea- 
tures of this “other” world were on 
the whole much like our own — • 
animallike, birdlike, fishlike — but 
this was like nothing either of us 
had ever seen. Crowding close to 
stare at it, Mike jogged my elbow 
and I dropped the thing. It didn’t 
fall ! It hung like a tiny, furry bal- 
loon in midair! 

Smitty looked at me and I at 
him. Up to now this second world 
had been a pretty ordinary sort of 
place, quiet and unspectacular, like 
a park on a week day. But this 
“rabbit” of Pat’s belonged in no 
zoo that we had ever seen. What 
other surprises were waiting for us, 
I wondered. 

I slid my hand under the thing. 
It yielded readily, although there 
was a bit of resistance, as though 
the air had thickened around it. I 
let go and it hung there, I prodded 
it with my forefinger, and it began 
to change. 

It had been a furry ball. It dwin- 
dled and lengthened, its fur grew 
sparser and spotted with black. It 
changed again, flattening into a 
kind of leathery pancake, then be- 
gan to grow again, swelling to the 
size of a basketball. Fur appeared 
on it again, splotched at first, then 

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 



fading to the same silver gray that 
it had been at first. 

Smitty had a queer look on his 
face. It was as though he had seen 
some significance in the changes the 
thing had undergone — as though 
the senseless metamorphosis had a 
pattern for him. He was half puz- 
zled, half troubled. 

“Hold on to it a minute,” he said. 
“I want to try something. I’ve got 
me an idea.” 

I picked the thing up gingerly, 
but it lay quiet in my palm. There 
was that same faint resistance I had 
noted before, a vague pressure when 
I moved it. I cupped both hands 
under it while Smitty touched it 
gently with his fingertips, exploring 
its surface, his eyes staring past it. 
He moved closer, and I saw sud- 
denly that his hands were gone to 
the wrists — that he was feeling his 
way slowly into that elsewhere from 
which he pulled pans of cookies and 
future wallets. It was uncanny to 
watch him, groping invisibly, his 
arms melting away as he pushed 
them farther into nowhere, explor- 
ing unseen contours of the furry 
thing. 

Then the thing jerked in my 
hands. I dropped it, startled. 
Smitty pulled one hand back and 
reached far into nowhere with the 
other, shoulder-deep, a grin of satis- 
faction growing on his face. The 
thing jerked again — and disap- 
peared. Smitty retrieved his miss- 
ing arm. The sleeve was slashed 
and his wrist was bleeding. 

“Thing scratched me,” he said. 



“Didn’t like the way I tickled it, I 
guess.” 

A ball of silver fluff that snuggles 
against a little girl’s cheek is one 
thing; a thing that scratches like 
a wild cat is another. Mike’s eyes 
were round, and I could see that he 
was full of questions. I forestalled 

them. 

“Pat’s been asleep for an hour,” 
I told him. "It’s past your own 
bedtime — even for camping out. 
We’ll tell you the whole thing in 
the morning.” 

He’s a good kid ; he went without 
a word, but I knew he was lying 
awake in his bed of leaves and 
grass, listening with all his ears. I 
didn’t want the nightmares that 
were whirling through my head to 
get started in his; I beckoned to 
Smitty and we strolled aw^y from 
the fire, down toward the creek. 
The stars overhead were very 
bright. I thought I could trace 
familiar constellations, but the 
brightnesses were all different. I 
wondered whether there was a moon 
like ours. 

“What happened?” I asked 
Smitty. 

He thought for a moment. “I 
dunno, exactly,” he said. “I read 
a couple of books one time, about 
the way I am and stuff like that. 
Fourth-dimension stuff. Tesseracts, 
and that. You ever seen it?” 

I had. I’ve read my share of 
science fantasies. , 

His blue eyes were very serious 
now. "You know how it goes, 

then, ” he said. “Cross-section of 
a line makes a point. Cross-section 



Fill CAS SEE IN FO DR DIMENSIONS 



AST— 3A 07 



of a surface makes a line. Cross- 
section of a solid makes a plane. 
Well, you go one step farther and 
take a section of something that's 
got four dimensions, and you’ve 
just naturally got something solid. 
That’s how I figure Pat’s rabbit.” 

It’s the way I’d been figuring 
myself, when I saw how he was 
tracing its shape through invisi- 
bility. When the thing changed 
shape, then, it meant that the greater- 
thing- — outside — was moving, and 
that our three-dimensional world 
was cutting a different section from 
its four-dimensional shape. 

“Why does it hang there like 
that, without anv support?’’ 

“It's a section,” he said promptly. 
“It won't move less’n the real out- 
side thing moves. Then it’ll more 
likely change shape— like it does — 
than move.” 

“Then how does it happen that 
we can pick it up and carry it 
around?” I demanded. “Tt doesn’t 
make sense.” 

He scratched his head. “I fig- 
ured you'd ask that,” he admitted. 
"1 dunno the answer. All I know 

is, I reached in and felt around 
where there ‘d ought to be more of 

it, and there was. I got scratched, 
didn't I?" 

“What did it feel like?” I asked. 
“What does it look like?” 

He scowled. “I can't answer 
that.” he complained. “It don’t 
make sense. Look — this thing’s 
got four dimensions ; we got three. 
We got no way of seeing anything 
like that. I don’t see it — I just 
have a way of knowing where it is. 

eg 



Sometimes it works out and some- 
times it don’t. How’s a square sup- 
posed to look to a straight line?” 

He had me there. Anyone who 
leads a normal, solid, three-dimen- 
sional existence has no way of even 
imagining what a four-dimensional 
something would look like. There’s 
nothing in our whole experience to 
work on. Smitty, with his crossed- 
up senses, might have been able to 
get something, but he said not. 

“O. K.,” I said. “Let’s get some 
sleep.” 

Did I say sleep? I didn’t do any 
sleeping. I lay there in the hay 
listening to the children’s quiet 
breathing and Smitty’s mellow 
snore, watching the stars go past. 
And I wondered. I wondered who 
would bury me when I got so old 
that I couldn’t totter around this 
God-forsaken garden any more. I 
wondered what Eleanor would do 
when they came back without me, 
and what the police would think, 
and who she'd marry after they got 
accustomed to the idea that I was 
dead. I wondered whether Smitty 
and the kids would come back to 
see me now and then, and how long , 
it would be before the kids outgrew 
the knack. I wondered who’d be 
filling my job at the works, and 
where they’d find another tenor for 
the club quartet, and how long 
there’d be gas rationing. You know 
how it is — 

Smitty didn’t worry any that I 
could see, but when he woke up he 
had the whole thing worked out. 

He foraged us a breakfast that was 



ASTOUNDING S C I E N C E F I C T t O I* 



mainly creek water and some kind 
of golden, plum-shaped fruit that 
tasted like slightly acid honey. He 
cleaned up, loaded the pack, and 
saddled it on Mike. Then he picked 
me up like a June bride. 

It was as easy as that. He made 
me close my eyes and hold my 
breath, so that I wouldn’t wiggle in 
the wrong key at the wrong moment, 
and then he just walked right on 
through. When I opened my eyes 
again I was staring up into Elea- 
nor’s face. 

“You might have told me you’d 
be home,” she said. “I'd have left 
a note for the milkman.” 

There you have female logic in a 
nutshell. She was right there in the 
kitchen when we came through. She 
must have seen the four of us just 
solidify in thin air like something in 
Thorne Smith. But she was sober, 
and sober women don’t see that kind 
of thing. So she didn’t see it. So 
it didn't happen. So we'd been over 
on the hill back of Hanson’s pond, 
where we usually camp. I raised 
an eyebrow at Smitty. Should we 
ask for trouble by trying to sell four 
dimensions to a woman who was 
content with three ? We should not. 

It was an easy resolution to make. 
No sooner was it in the book than 
Pat came trotting out of the play- 
room the kids have off the kitchen 
with something in her arms. She 
held it up for her mother to see. 

“Wabbit!” she crowed. 

This one was white, with lumps. 

It had the same long fur, and noth- 
ing else. It could have been an- 
other slice of the first one, if that 

FRICASSEE IN FOUR DIMENSIONS 



hadn’t “gone out” when Smitty 
reached around back of beyond and 
tickled its dimity. 

Eleanor didn’t care what it was. 
She took one close look and knew 
it was no rabbit. To a woman the 
unknown is perilous — and I think 
they’ve got something there. She 
made a polite face, took it quietly 
out of Pat’s hands as though it had 
been steeped in smallpox, and 
pushed it at Smitty. 

"Nasty!” she said firmly. “Take 
it away, Smitty. Pat is going to 
take a bath.” 

So there you have it. Pat seemed 
to be satisfied; she’s campaigned 
for rabbits before, and knows how 
far she’s likely to get where they're 
concerned. I nudged Smitty. 

“Bring it down into the cellar,” I 
told him. “You got rid of the other 
one all right.” 

The three of us went down into 
the corner behind the coal bin 
where Eleanor couldn't see us from 
the stairs. Smitty reached into no 
place right up to his shoulders and 
twiddled and tweaked and all but 
pulled the thing’s tail, if it had a 
tail, but to no avail. Maybe there 
was no ticklish spot within reach. 
Maybe this one liked being tickled. 
I dunno. I can tell you Sinitty’s 
version, though. He claims that Pat 
picked the thing up like the brass 
ring on a merry-go-round, on her 
way through. He maintains that it 
didn't belong in either world until 
she took it there, and then, of course, 
there was no reason why a four- 
dimensional whatsit shouldn’t have 

«e 



cross-sections in both worlds as well 
as one. Maybe it makes sense to 
you. 

We were stuck with it ; that much 
was plain. All Smitty’s prodding 
and poking had just one result: the 
tffing swelled up to about the size 
of a watermelon — one of the striped 
ones — and stayed that way. We 
settled on the chicken coop as the 
most out-of-the-way place for it. and 
left it floating about ten feet up in 
the air, so the kids couldn’t get at 
it. Mike watched the whole thing, 
of course, but he’s a good kid and 
practically ten, and he knows what 
thing’s aren’t good politics. Most 
kids do, his age. 

I went out myself and turned a 
flashlight on it, a couple of times 
in the next week, to see if it was 
doing anything. It wasn’t. It 

didn’t eat. It didn’t breathe. It 
didn’t do anything. And the hens 
didn’t mind. So I sort of forgot it. 

I guess you remember what hap- 
pened to me that summer. The cat- 
tle raisers and the meat packers 
were holding out in the hope that 
something or somebody would force 
the retail ceilings up to where they 
could get them a couple extra dollars 
for the stuff on the hoof and in the 
large. The army and navy were 
getting what there was, and the rest 
of us were getting used to spaghetti 
and greens. I’m not complaining, 
mind you. We had as much as 
anybody, and we had Smitty make 
it palatable, but that wasn’t much. 

One by one the hens went the 
way of all fowl. Eleanor, being up 
to her ears in civilian mobilization 

70 



stuff, had committees here and com- 
mittees there, and they all liked to 
meet for lunch and argue over a 
club sandwich or a plate of chicken 
salad. When the hotel lunchroom 
closed down they started to meet 
around at members’ homes, only 
mostly they met at ours. And then 
the Big Shot decided to give Madi- 
sonville the once-over. 

I will swear to this day that some- 
one reported to Washington on 
Eleanor’s committee luncheons. 
From the start there was no ques- 
tion of her going* anywhere else. 
There was to be a Big Shot and 
an Assistant Big Shot — male — and 
a lesser shot from Albany to repre- 
sent the state O. C. M. There would 
be Notables and there would be the 
Press. That last was all right; the 
Press could eat spaghetti on the 
back porch with the kids and me 
if it had to, and it wouldn’t kick too 
hard. I’ve thrown too many good 
stories its way. 

Only at that moment there were 
just four old hens in the coop — four 
hens and a speckled rooster. I had 
known them as a boy. I had grown 
up with them. The fact that they 
were alive was as much sentimental 
attachment as it was a certain skep- 
ticism that even Smitty could do 
anything with their leathery car- 
casses. At least, we’d never dared 
to put the matter to a test. 

Smitty is a man! Eleanor went 
to him when she got the telegram 
and laid the cards on the table. If 
Madisonville had other plans for 
the 25th, the Big Shot could go to 
Utica. Utica, which was apparently 

ASTOUNDING SCI BUCK • FI CTION 



in the heart of the beef belt, was 
eager for the honor. There it was. 
Smitty grinned his friendly grin and 
asked how main' there’d be. 

Let me say right now that I am 
not going to hint vaguely at dark 
and dirty plots or corruption in the 
Madisonville O. C. M. Mrs. Dud- 
ley Winthrop happened to be our 
next-door neighbor — she was going 
to let the kids bunk with her Tommy 
while the shindig was on — and she 
happened to have been Eleanor’s 
rival for the chairmanship of the 
mobilization office. Beyond that it’s 
coincidence — and the family jinx. 

Because at daybreak on the 25th 
of June, or thereabouts, Smitty 
came to me with the only worried 
look I’ve ever seen on his homely 
pan. It had to be pretty bad, be- 
cause every last detail had been 
polished off so many times that 
even I knew them by heart. There 
was nothing, short of a typhoon, 
that could possibly spoil the set-up. 
Typhoons — and Winthrops’ dog. 
Where there had been five fat fowl, 
set for the fricassee, there were five 
mangled corpses, fit for nothing at 
all. Smitty looked as sick as I felt. 
I knew what this was going to do 
to Eleanor. And then I saw a cal- 
culating sort of gleam come into 
his bright-blue eyes. 

“I got me an idea, boss,” he said 
thoughtfully, “and I bet it’ll work. 
Yep — I think we’re all right.” 

Time went by like quicksilver that 
day. Eleanor herded in the quartet 
of high-school girls who were going 
to serve — Victory Corps members, 



every one of ’em, and wearing their 
armbands to prove it — and Smitty 
started to whip them into shape. I 
heard him whistling happily while 
he worked, and pretty soon I 
smelled the unmistakable fragrance 
of roast meat. 

The ladies of the O. C. M. smelled 
it, too, and I saw their eyebrows 
stretching as they figured out ways 
and means of checking on the local 
Black Market as soon as they got 
home. If Smitty had taken a chance 
on B. M. meat, Eleanor’s career 
was a dead duck and so was mine 
— but it didn't smell to me like any 
meat I’d ever met. I hoped to high 
heaven it was unrationed, even if 
it had to be grilled skunk. 

As for the Super Big Shot and 
all the lesser Big Shots, right down 
to Eleanor’s fourth assistant in 
charge of nonexistent gas masks, 
they frankly drooled. It did me 
good to watch them. 

Even with the preliminaries 
Smitty was outdoing himself, and 
he had those four kids trained like 
Rockettes. There was never a meal 
like it in Madisonville. We worked 
our way through one course after 
another, our noses tilted all the time 
for that elusive, meaty fragrance 
which was wafted our way every 
time one of the girls opened the 
kitchen door. 

And then it came. It was one of 
Smitty’s special fricassees, or gou- 
lashes, or ragouts, or whatever you 
want to call them. It was flavored 
with herbs that most people had 
never heard of. and blended with 
outlandish wild mushrooms that 



FRICASSEE IN FOUR DIMENSIONS 



1 1 



most people would avoid like small- 
pox. There were other things in 
it that were pure Smitty. And 
above all it had meat: big chunks 
of meat, tender, and savory, and 
full of a strange, gamey quality like 
nothing I had ever tasted. It was 
superb ! 

Dessert, though I doubt that such 
nectar has ever before or since 
graced a Madisonville table, was an 
anticlimax. The coffee, though it 
contained neither acorns nor oak 
sawdust, was just coffee. We set- 
tled down to endure the speeches. 

Eleanor is a wise woman. She 
took three minutes and used one. 
The Middling Big Shot from Albany 
was assigned five and was just 
warming up after ten, by way of 
introducing the Assistant Big Shot, 
■who in turn would make a slightly 
longer speech in introduction of the 
real Super Big Shot in whose honor, 
et cetera we were all gathered. 
About the middle of his second ten 
minutes I felt something wriggle 
under my belt. 

It was the damnedest feeling ! 
Those college boys who swallowed 
live goldfish back in the snorting 
’30s must have had the same sensa- 
tion. It was like live waltzing mice, 
careening around just north of my 
duodenum, jostling and bumping 
each other as they went around. I 
stared across the table at Eleanor, 
and I could tell by the look of hor- 
ror on her face that she was feeling 
the same thing. I looked at the 
speaker, and I could see the beads 
of sweat standing out on his fore- 
head and upper lip. I could see his 

72 



vest buttons jiggle as an extra hard 
bump hit him. 

It was the same with all of them. 
They were playing up nobly and 
smiling like grim death, but it was 
getting them. They couldn’t take 
much more. Then the kitchen door 
opened a crack and one side of 
Smitty’s face appeared in the open- 
ing. His freckles stood out like the 
splotches on a sparrow's egg, and 
his visble eye rolled wildly until it 
found me. This was no time to hang 
on false etiquette. I murmured ex- 
cuses and took off. 

The kitchen was a shambles. The 
girls had crammed themselves 
through the back door and were 
watching in fascinated horror from 
the porch. The caldron in which 
Smitty had stewed up his ragout 
stood on the kitchen table, and out 
of it, like a ferment of dripping red 
balloons, crowded swollen chunks 
of well-cooked meat — chunks that 
were growing larger with every mo- 
ment. 

Smitty slid the door shut behind 
us. “Boss,” he whispered hoarsely', 
“I shouldn’t of tried it. It’s still 
alive !” 

The thing hit me like a pail of 
cold water and left me shaking in 
my shoes. That was it, of course! 
The cross-section was solid meat, 
so he'd fricasseed it. And carved 
or stewed, that cross-section was 
still part of an n-dimensional what- 
is it over back of nowhere, who 
didn’t like to have its cross-sections 
eaten and was going away where it 
wouldn’t be misused. Whatever 

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE FICTION 



effect our own machinations had 
had on it — and evidently we had had 
a pretty potent effect, because the 
chunks were still chunks — that 
cross-section was going to get back 
into its normal shape somehow, and 
do it soon, and when that happened 
we who’d partaken thereof — 
Snritty was peeling off his apron. 
“Boss,” he said, “I swear I didn’t 
mean it. I figured if it was cooked, 
it was cooked. I figured it’d never 
miss one little slice out of the whole 
thing. I gotta get to it. I gotta 
get it out of here.” 

Before I could stop him he had 
plunged both arms into the squirm- 
ing mess of stew. They melted 
away like wax — to the elbows — to 
the shoulders. His head and shoul- 
ders followed ; he was a pair of 
trunkless legs ; he was gone. And 
inside me that four-dimensional 
fricassee gave one last startled kick 
and dissolved. I gulped. 

The cold sweat was pouring down 
my back. Three of the girls came 
shuffling into the kitchen, dragging 
the third, who had fainted when she 
saw Smitty. stew and all vanish into 
thin air. I gave them a sickly grin. 



“Magic!” I croaked. “Tricks. 
He’d oughta known better.” I 
fished some folding money out of 
my pants. "Clean up, will you, 
kids?” 

I slid open the kitchen door far 
enough so that I could see Eleanor. 
The glassy look had gone from the 
Assistant Big Shot’s eyes. He fin- 
ished his introduction and the Super 
Big Shot got up. She paid due 
tribute to her hostess, spoke favor- 
able of the Madisonville O. C. M., 
and started her routine spiel. When 
she was starting on her fifth breath 
I slipped back into my seat. Across 
the table, Eleanor smiled sweetly 
at me and nodded. 

Well, there you have it, Smitty 
was gone. The ump-dimensional 
"rabbit” was gone. Eleanor had 
served a super -duper of a dinner to 
twenty-odd people who stuffed to 
the gills and went home happy with 
next to nothing in their stomachs. 
The honor of the Madisonville 
O. C. M. was unsullied. 

I’d give it all up to have Smitty 
back. Try as I will, I just can't 
cook. 



THE END. 




FRICASSEE IN FOUR DIMENSIONS 



73 




The Iron Standard 



by Lewis Padgett 

Padgett presents a neat problem in hotv to earn a living 
in a rigidly frozen economy. The explorers had inven- 
tions to sell — but there teas a law against inventions! 

Illustrated by Kramer 



“So the ghost won’t walk for a 
year — Venusian time,” Thirkell 

said, spooning up cold beans with a 
disgusted air. 

Rufus Munn, the captain, looked 
up briefly from his task of de-cock- 
roaching the soup. “Dunno why we 
had to import these. A year plus 
four weeks, Steve. There’ll be a 
month at space before we hit Earth 
again.” 

Thirkell’s round, pudgy face grew 



solemn. “What happens in the 
meantime? Do we starve on cold 
beans ?’’ 

Munn sighed, glancing through 
the open, screened port of the space- 
ship Goodwill to where dim figures 
moved in the mists outside. But he 
didn’t answer. Barton Underhill, 
supercargo and handy man, who had 
wangled his passage by virtue of his 
father’s wealth, grinned tightly and 
said, “What d'you expect? We 



74 



ASTOUNDING SCI ENCK FICTION 



don’t dare use fuel. There's just 
enough to get us home. So it's cold 
beans or nothing.” 

“Soon it will be nothing,” Thir- 
led! said solemnly. “We have been 
spendthrifts. Wasting our sub- 
stance in riotous living.” 

“Riotous living !” Munn growled. 
“We gave most of our grub to the 
Venusians.” 

“Well,” Underhill murmured, 
“they fed us — for a month.” 

“Not now. There’s an embargo. 
What do they have against us, any- 
how ?” 

Munn thrust back his stool with 
sudden decision. “That’s something 
we’ll have to figure out. Things 
can’t go on like this. We simply 
haven’t enough food to last us a 
year. And we can’t live off the 
land — ” He stopped as someone 
unzipped the valve screen and en- 
tered, a squat man with high cheek- 
bones and a beak of a nose in a red- 
bronze face. 

“Find anything, Redskin?” Un- 
derhill asked. 

Mike Soaring Eagle tossed a plas- 
tisac on the table. “Six mushrooms. 
No wonder the Venusians use hy- 
droponics. They have to. Only 
fungi will grow in this sponge of a 
world, and most of that’s poisonous. 
No use, skipper.” 

Munn’s mouth tightened. “Yeah. 
Where’s Bronson?” 

“Panhandling. But he won’t get 
a jal." The Navaho nodded toward 
the port. “Here he comes now.” 
After a moment the others heard 
Bronson’s slow footsteps. The en- 
gineer came in, his face red as his 



hair. “Don’t ask me,” he murmured. 
“Don’t say a word, anybody. Me, 
a Kerry man, trying to bum a lousy 
jal from a shagreen-skinned so-and- 
so with an iron ring in his nose like 
a Ubangi savage. Think of it ! The 
shame will stay with me forever.” 
“My sympathy,” Thirkell said. 
“But did you get any jals?” 

Bronson glared at him. “Would 
I have taken his dirty coins if he’d 
offered them?” the engineer yelled, 
his eyes bloodshot. “I’d have flung 
them in his slimy face, and you can 
take my word for it. / touch their 
rotten money ? Give me some 
beans.” He seized a plate and mo- 
rosely began to eat. 

Thirkell exchanged glances with 
Underhill. “He didn't get any 
money,” the latter said. 

Bronson started back with a snort. 
“He asked me if I belonged to the 
Beggars’ Guild ! Even tramps have 
to join a union on this planet !” 
Captain Munn scowled thought- 
fully. “No, it isn’t a union, Bron- 
son, or even much like the medieval 
guilds. The tarkomars are a lot 
more powerful and a lot less princi- 
pled. Unions grew out of a definite 
social and economic background, 
and they fill a purpose — a check- 
and-balance system that keeps build- 
ing. I’m not talking about unions; 
on Earth some of ’em are good — 
like the Air Transport — and some 
are graft-ridden, like Undersea 
Dredgers. The tarkomars are dif- 
ferent. They don’t fulfill any pro- 
ductive purpose. They just keep 
the Venusian system in its backwa- 



THE IRON STANDARD 



75 



“Yes,” Thirkell said, “and unless 
we're members, we aren’t allowed to 
work — at anything. And we can’t 
be members till we pay the initiation 
fee — a thousand sofals.” 

“Easy on those beans,” Underhill 
cautioned. “We’ve only ten more 
caus.” 

There was silence. Presently 
Munn passed cigarettes. 

“We’ve got to do something, 
that’s certain,” he said. “We can’t 
get food except from the Venusians, 
and they won’t give it to us. One 
thing in our favor: the laws are so 
arbitrary that they can’t refuse to 
sell us grub — it’s illegal to refuse le- 
gal tender.” 

Mike Soaring Eagle glumly 
sorted his six mushrooms. “Yeah. 
If we can get our hands on legal 
tender. We’re broke — broke on 
Venus — and we’ll soon be starving 
to death. If anybody can figure out 
an answer to that one — ” 

This was in 1964, three years 
after the first successful flight to 
Mars, five years since Dooley and 
Hastings had brought their ship 
down in Mare Imbrium. The Moon, 
of course, was uninhabited, save by 
active but unintelligent algae. The 
big-chested, alert Martians, with 
their high metabolism and their bril- 
liant, erratic minds, had been 
friendly, and it was certain that the 
cultures of Mars and Earth would 
not clash. As for Venus, till now, 
no ship had landed there. 

The Goodwill was the ambassa- 
dor. It was an experiment, like the 
earlier Martian voyage, for no one 

76 



knew whether or not there was in- 
telligent life on Venus. Supplies 
for more than a year were stowed 
aboard, dehydrates, plastibulbs, con- 
centrates, and vitamin foods, but ev- 
ery man of the crew had a sneaking 
hunch that food would be found in 
plenty on Venus. 

There was food — yes. The Ve- 
nusians grew it, in their hydroponic 
tanks under the cities. But on the 
surface of the planet grew nothing 
edible at all. There was little ani- 
mal or bird life, so hunting was im- 
possible, even had the Earthmen 
been allowed to retain their weap- 
ons. And in the beginning it had 
seemed like a gala holiday after the 
arduous space trip — a year-long 
fete and carnival in an alien, fasci- 
nating civilization. 

It was alien, all right. The Ve- 
nusians were conservative. What 
was good enough for their remote 
ancestors was quite good enough for 
them. They didn’t want changes, it 
seemed. Their current set-up had 
worked O. K. for centuries; why 
alter it now? 

The Earthmen meant change — 
that was obvious. 

Result: a boycott of the Earth- 
men. 

It was all quite passive. The first 
month had brought no trouble ; Cap- 
tain Munn had been presented with 
the keys of the capital city, Vyring, 
on the outskirts of which the Good- 
will now rested, and the Venusians 
brought food in plenty — odd but 
tasty dishes from the hydroponic 
gardens. In return, the Earthmen 

ASTOUNDING SC t E N C E PICT I ON 



were lavish with their own stores, 
depleting them dangerously. 

And the Venusian food spoiled 
.quickly. There was no need to pre- 
serve it, for the hydroponic tanks 
turned out a steady, unfailing sup- 
ply. In the end the Earthmen were 
left with a few weeks’ stock of the 
food they had brought with them, 
and a vast pile of garbage that had 
been lusciously appetizing a few 
days before. 

Then the Venusians stopped 
bringing their quick-spoiling fruits, 
vegetables, and meat-mushrooms 
and clamped down. The party was 
over. They had no intention of 
harming the Earthmen ; they re- 
mained carefully friendly. But from 
now on it was Pay as You're Served 
— and no checks cashed. A big 
meat-mushroom, enough for four 
hungry men, cost ten jals. 

Since the Earthmen had no jals, 
they got no meat-mushrooms — nor 
anything else. 

In the beginning it hadn’t seemed 
important. Not until they got down 
to cases and began to wonder ex- 
actly how they could get food. 

■ There was no way. 

So they sat in the Goodwill eat- 
ing cold beans and looking like five 
of the Seven Dwarfs, a quintet of 
stocky, short, husky men, big-boned 
and muscular, especially chosen for 
their physiques to stand the rigors 
of space flight — and their brains, 
also specially chosen, couldn’t help 
them now. 

It was a simple problem — simple 
and primitive. They, the representa- 
tives of Earth’s mightiest culture, 



were hungry. They would soon be 
hungrier. 

And they didn't have a jal — noth- 
ing but worthless gold, silver and 
paper currency. There was metal 
in the ship, but none of the pure 
metal they needed, except in alloys 
that couldn't be broken down. 

Venus was on the iron standard. 

“ — there’s got to be an answer,” 
Munn said stubbornly, his hard-bit- 
ten, harsh face somber. He pushed 
back his plate with an angry gesture. 
“I’m going to see the Council 
again.” 

“What good will that do?” Thir- 
kell wanted to know. “We’re on 
the spot, there’s no getting around 
it. Money talks.” 

“Just the same, I’m going to talk 
to Jorust,” the captain growled. 
“She’s no fool.” 

“Exactly,” Thirkell said crypti- 
cally. 

Munn stared at him, beckoned to 
Mike Soaring Eagle, and turned to- 
ward the valve. Underhill jumped 
up eagerly. 

“May I go?” 

Bronson gloomily toyed with his 
beans. “Why do you want to go? 
You couldn’t even play a slot ma- 
chine in Vyring's skid row — if they 
had slot machines. Maybe you think 
if you tell ’em your old man’s a 
Tycoon of Amalgamated Ores, 
they'll break down and hand out 
meal tickets — eh?” 

But his tone was friendly enough, 
and Underhill merely grinned. Cap- 
tain Munn said, “Come along, if you 
want, but hurry up.” The three 



THE IRON STANDARD 



77 



men went out into the steaming 
mists, their feet sloshing through 
sticky mud. 

It wasn’t uncomfortably hot; the 
high winds of Venus provided for 
quick evaporation, a natural air con- 
ditioning that kept the men from 
feeling the humidity. Munn re- 
ferred to his compass. The out- 
skirts of Vyring were half a mile 
away, but the fog was, as usual, like 
pea soup. On Venus it is always 
bird-walking weather. Silently the 
trio slogged on. 

“I thought Indians knew how to 
live off the land,” Underhill pres- 
ently remarked to the Navaho. 
Mike Soaring Eagle looked at him 
quizzically. 

“I’m not a Venusian Indian.” he 
explained. “Maybe I could make a 
bow and arrow and bring down a 
Venusian — but that wouldn’t help, 
unless he had a lot of sofals in his 
purse.” 

“We might eat him,” Underhill 
murmured. “Wonder what roast 
Venusian would taste like?” 

“Find out and you can write a 
best seller when you get back home,” 
Munn remarked. “If you get back 
home. Vyring’s got a police force, 
chum.” 

“Oh, well,” Underhill said, and 
left it at that. “Here’s the Water 
Gate. Lord — I smell somebody’s 
dinner!” 

“So do I,” the Navaho grunted, 
“but I hoped nobody would men- 
tion it. Shut up and keep walk- 
ing.” 

The wall around Vyring was in 
the nature of a dike, not a fortifica- 

78 



tion. Venus was both civilized and 
unified; there were, apparently, no 
wars and no tariffs — a natural de- 
velopment for a world state. Air 
transports made sizzling noises as 
they shot past, out of sight in the 
fog overhead. Mist shrouded the 
streets, torn into_ tatters by occa- 
sional huge fans. Vyring, shielded 
from the winds, was unpleasantly 
hot, except indoors where artificial 
air conditioning could be brought 
into use. 

Underhill was reminded of Ven- 
ice: the streets were canals. Water 
craft of various shapes and sizes 
drifted, glided, or raced past. Even 
the beggars traveled by water. 
There were rutted, muddy footpaths 
beside the canals, but no one with a 
fal to his name ever walked. 

The Earthmen walked, cursing 
fervently as they splashed through 
the muck. They were, for the most 
part, ignored. 

A water taxi scooted toward the 
bank, its pilot, wearing the blue 
badge of his tarkotnar, hailing them. 
“May I escort you.?” he wanted to 
know. 

Underhill exhibited a silver dol- 
lar. “If you'll take this — sure.” All 
the Earthmen had learned Venusian 
quickly; they were good linguists, 
having been chosen for this as well 
as other transplanetary virtues. The 
phonetic Venusian tongue was far 
from difficult. 

It was no trouble at all to under- 
stand the taxi pilot when he said no. 

“Toss you for it,” Underhill said 
hopefully. “Double or nothing.” 

But the Venusians weren’t gatn- 

ASTOTJNDING SCIENCE FICTION 



biers. “Double what?” the pilot in- 
quired. "That coin? It’s silver.” 
He indicated the silver, rococo fili- 
gree on the prow of his craft. 
“Junk!” 

“This would be a swell place for 
Benjamin Franklin,” Mike Soaring 
Eagle remarked. “His false teeth 
were made of iron, weren’t they?” 

“If they were, he had a Venusian 
fortune in his mouth,” Underhill 
said. 

“Not quite.” 

“If it could buy a full-course din- 
ner, it’s a fortune,” Underhill in- 
sisted. 

The pilot, eying the Earthmen 
scornfully, drifted off in search of 
wealthier fares. Munn, doggedly 
plodding on, wiped sweat from his 
forehead. Swell place, Vyring, he 
thought. Swell place to starve to 
death. 

Half an hour of difficult hiking 
roused Munn to a slow, dull anger. 
If Jorust refused to see him, he 
thought, there was going to be trou- 
ble, even though they’d taken away 
his guns. He felt capable of tear- 
ing down Vyring with his teeth. 
And eating the more edible portions. 

Luckily, Jorust was available. 
The Earthmen were ushered into 
her office, a big, luxurious room 
high above the city, with windows 
open to the cooling breezes. Jorust 
was skittering around the room on 
a high chair, equipped with wheels 
and some sort of motor. Along the 
walls ran a slanting shelf, like a desk 
and presumably serving the same 
function. It was shoulder-high, but 



Jorust ’s chair raised her to its level. 
She probably started in one corner 
in the morning, Munn thought, and 
worked her way around the room 
during the day. 

Jorust was a slim, gray-haired 
Venusian woman with a skin the 
texture of fine shagreen, and alert 
black eyes that were wary now. She 
climbed down from her chair, ges- 
tured the men to seats, and took 
one herself. She lit a pipe that 
looked like an oversized cigarette 
holder, stuffing it with a cylinder of 
pressed yellow herbs. Aromatic 
smoke drifted up. Underhill sniffed 
wistfully. 

“May you be worthy of your fa- 
thers,” Jorust said politely, extend- 
ing her six-fingered hand in greet- 
ing. “What brings you?” 

“Hunger,” Munn said bluntly. “I 
think it’s about time for a show- 
down.” 

Jorust watched him inscrutably. 
“Well ?” 

“We don't like being pushed 
around.” 

“Have we harmed you?” the 
Council head asked. 

Munn looked at her. “Let’s put 
our cards on the table. We're get- 
ting the squeeze play. You’re a big 
shot here, and you’re either respon- 
sible or vou know why. How about 
it?” 

“No,” Jorust said after a pause, 
“no, I’m not as powerful as you 
seem to think. I am one of the ad- 
ministrators. I do not make the 
laws. I merely see that they are 
carried out. We are not enemies.” 

“That might happen,” Munn said 



THE IRON STANDAUD 



79 



grimly. “If another expedition 
comes from Eartli and finds us 
dead—" 

“We would not kill you. It is un- 
traditional.” 

“You could starve us to death, 
though.” 

Jorust narrowed her eyes. “Buy 
food. Any man can do that, no 
matter what his race.” 

“And what do we use for mon- 
ey?” Munn asked. “You won’t take 
our currency. We haven’t any of 
yours." 

“Your currency is worthless.” 
Jorust explained. “We have gold 
and silver for the mining — it is com- 
mon here. A difal — twelve fats — 
will buy a good deal of food. A 
sofal will buy even more than that.” 

She was right, of course, Munn 
knew'. A sofal was one thousand 
seven hundred twenty-eight fals. 
Yeah ! 

“And how do you expect us to 
get any of your iron money?” he 

snapped. 

“Work for it, as our own people 
do. The fact that you are from an- 
other world does not dispose of your 
obligatory duty to create through 
labor." 

“All right,” Munn pursued, 
“we're willing. Get us a job.” 

“What kind?” 

“Dredging canals ! Anything !” 

“Are you a member of the canal 
dredgers’ tarkomar? ” 

“No,” Munn said. “How could 
I have forgotten to join?" 

Jorust ignored the sarcasm. “You 
must join. All trades here have 
their tarkomars” 



“Lend me a thousand sofals and 
I’ll join one.” 

“You have tried that l>efore,” Jo- 
rust told him. “Our moneylenders 
report that your collateral was 
worthless.” 

“Worthless! D’you mean to say 
we've nothing in our ship worth a 
thousand sofals to your race ? It's a 
squeeze play and you know it. Our 
water purifier alone is worth six 
times that to you.” 

Jorust seemed affronted. “For a 
thousand years we have cleansed our 
water with charcoal. If we changed 
now r , we would be naming our an- 
cestors fools. They were not fools ; 
they were great and wise.” 

“What about progress?” 

“I see no need for it.” Jorust said. 
“Our civilization is a perfect unit as 
it stands. Even the beggars are 
well-fed. There is no unhappiness 
on Venus. The ways of our ances- 
tors have been tested and found 
good. So why change?” 

“But—” 

“We would merely upset the 
status quo if we altered the bal- 
ance,” Jorust said decisively, rising. 
“May you be worthy of your fathers’ 
names.” 

“Listen — ” Munn began. 

But Jorust was back on her chair, 
no longer listening. 

The three Earthmen looked at one 
another, shrugged, and went out. 
The answer was definitely no. 

“And that,” Munn said, as they 
descended in the elevator, “is em- 
phatically that. Jorust plans to have 
us starve to death. . The word’s out.” 



so 



ASTOUNDING SCI E NCE -FI CTION 




Underhill was inclined to disagree. 
“She’s all right. As she said, she’s 
just an administrator. It’s the tar- 
komars who are the pressure group 
here. They’re a powerful bloc.” 
“They run Venus. I know.” 
Munn grimaced. “It’s difficult to 
understand the psychology of these 
people. They seem unalterably op- 
posed to change. We represent 
change. So they figure they’ll sim- 
ply ignore us.” 

“It won’t work,” Underhill said. 
“Even if we starve to death, there’ll 
be more Earth ships later.” 

“The same gag could work on 
them, too.” 

“Starvation? But — ” 

“Passive resistance. There's no 
law compelling Venusians to treat 
with Earthmen. They can simply 
adopt a closed-door policy, and 
there's not a thing we can do about 
it. There’s no welcome mat on 
Venus.” 

Mike Soaring Eagle broke a long 
silence as they emerged to the canal 
bank. “It’s a variation of ancestor 
worship, their psychology. Trans- 
ferred egotism, perhaps — a racial 
inferiority complex.” 

Munn shook his head. 
“You’re drawing it a bit fine.” 

“All right, maybe I am. 

But it boils down to worship 
of the past. And fear. Their 
present social culture has 
worked for centuries. They 
want no intrusions. It's logi- 
cal. If you had a machine 
that worked perfectly at the 
job for which it had been de- 



THE IRON STANDARD 



81 



signed, would you want improve- 
ments ?” 

“Why not?” Munn said. “-Cer- 
tainly I would.” 

“Why?” 

“Well — to save time. If a new at- 
tachment would make the machine 
double its production. I’d want 
that.” 

The Navaho looked thoughtful. 
“Suppose it turned out — say — re- 
frigerators. There’d be repercus- 
sions. You’d need less labor, which 
would upset the economic struc- 
ture.” 

“Microscopically.” 

“In that case. But there’d also be 
a change in the consumer’s angle. 
More people would have refrigera- 
tors. More people would make 
homemade ice cream. Sales on ice 
cream would drop — retail sales. 
The wholesalers would buy less 
milk. The farmers would — ” 

“I know,” Munn said. “For 
want of a nail the kingdom was lost. 
You’re speaking of microcosms. 
Even if you weren’t, there are auto- 
matic adjustments — there always 
are.” 

“An experimental, growing civi- 
lization is willing to stand for such 
adjustments,” Mike Soaring Eagle 
pointed out. “The Venusians are 
ultraconservative. They figure they 
don’t need to grow or change any 
more. Their system has worked for 
centuries. It’s perfectly integrated. 
Intrusion of anything might upset 
the apple cart. The tarkomars have 
the power, and they intend to keep 
it.” 

“So we starve,” Underhill put in. 



The Indian grinned at him. 

“Looks like it. Unless we can dope 
out some way of making money.” 
“We ought to.” Munn said. “We 
were chosen for our I. Q., among 
other things.” 

“Our talents aren’t too suitable,” 
Mike Soaring Eagle remarked, 
kicking a stone into the canal. 
“You’re a physicist. I’m a natural- 
ist. Bronson’s an engineer, and 
Steve Thirkell’s a sawbones. You, 
my useless young friend, are a rich 
man’s son.” 

Underhill smiled in an embar- 
rassed fashion. “Well, dad came up 
the hard way. He knew how to 
make money. That’s what we need 
now, isn’t it?” 

“How did he clean up?” 

“Stock market." 

“That helps a lot,” Munn said. 
“I think our best plan is to find 
some process the Venusians really 
need, and then sell it to them.” 

“If we could wireless back to 
Earth for help — ’’ Underhill began. 

“■ — then we’d have nothing to 
worry about.” the Navaho ended. 
“Unfortunately Venus has a Heavi- 
side layer, so we can’t wireless. 
You’d better try your hand at in- 
venting something, skipper. But 
whether or not the Venusians will 
want it afterwards. / don’t know.” 
Munn brooded. “The status quo 
can’t remain permanently that way. 
It ain’t sensible, as my grandfather 
used to sav about practically every- 
thing. There are always inventors. 
New processes — they’ve got to be 
assimilated into the social set-up. I 
should be able to dope out a gadget. 



82 



ASTOUND I NO SCIENCE - FICTION 



Even a good preservative for foods 
might do it." 

“Not with the hydroponic gar- 
dens producing as they do.” 

“Um-in. A better mousetrap — 
something useless but intriguing. A 
one-armed bandit — ” 

“They’d pass a law against it.” 

“Well, you suggest something." 

“The Venusians don’t seem to 
know much about genetics. If I 
could produce some unusual foods 
by crossbreeding . . . eh?" 

“Maybe," Munn said. “Maybe.” 

Steve Thirkell's pudgy face looked 
into the port. The rest, of the party 
were seated at the table, scribbling 
on stylopads and drinking weak 
coffee. 

“I have an idea," Thirkell said. 

Munn grunted. “1 know your 
ideas. What is it now?" 

“Very simple. A plague strikes 
the Venusians and I find an anti- 
virus that will save them. They will 
be grateful — " 

“ — and you’ll marry Jorust and 
rule the planet,” Munn finished. 
“Ha !’* 

“Not exactly,” Thirkell went on 
imperturbably. “If they’re not 
grateful, we’ll simply hold out on 
the antitoxin till they pay up.” 

“The only thing wrong with that 
brainstorm is that the . Venusians 
don’t seem to be suffering from a 
plague,” Mike Soaring Eagle 
pointed out. “Otherwise it’s per- 
fect." 

Thirkell sighed. “I was afraid 
you’d mention that. Maybe we could 
be unethical — just a little, you know 



— and start a plague. Typhoid or 
something.” 

“What a man !” the Navaho said 
admiringly. “You’d make a grand 
murderer, Steve.” 

“I have often thought so. But I 
didn't intend to go as far as mur- 
der. A painful, incapacitating dis- 
ease — ” 

“Such as?” Munn asked. 

“Diphtheria?” the murderous 
physician suggested hopefully. 

“A cheerful prospect,” Mike 
Soaring Eagle muttered. “You 
sound like an Apache.” 

“Diphtheria, beriberi, leprosy, bu- 
bonic plague,” Pat Bronson said 
violently. “I vote for all of ’em. 
Give the nasty little frogs a taste of 
their own medicine. Wallop ’em 
good.” 

“Suppose we let you start a mild 
plague,” Munn said. “Something 
that couldn’t conceivably be fatal — 
how would you go about it?" 

“Pollute the water supply or 
something ... eh ?” 

“What with?" 

Thirkell suddenly looked heart- 
broken. “Oh! Oh!” 

Munn nodded. “The Goodzvill 
isn’t stocked for that sort of thing. 
We’re germless. Antiseptic inside 
and out. Have you forgotten the 
physical treatment they gave us be- 
fore we left?" 

Bronson cursed. “Never will I 
forget that — a hypo every hour! 
Antitoxins, shots, ultraviolet X rays, 
till my bones turned green.” 

“Exactly,” Munn said. “We’re 
practically germless. It’s a precau- 
tion they had to take, to prevent our 



THK IRON STANDARD 



83 



starting a plague on Venus.” 

"But we want to start a plague,” 
Thirkell said plaintively. 

"You couldn’t even give a Ve- 
nusian a head cold,” Munn told 
him. “So that’s out. What about 
Venusian anaesthetics ? Are they as 
good as ours ?” 

"Better,” the physician admitted. 
"Not that they need them, except 
for the children. Their synapses 
are funny. They’ve mastered self- 
hypnosis so they can block pain 
when it’s necessary.” 

“Sulfa drugs ?” 

‘‘I’ve thought of that. They've 
got those, too.” 

“My idea,” Bronson broke in, “is 
water power. Or dams. Whenever 
it rains, there’s a flood.” 

“There’s good drainage, though,” 
Munn said. “The canals take care 
of that.” 

“Now let me finish! Those fish- 
skinned so-and-sos have hydro- 
power, but it isn’t efficient. There’s 
so much fast water all over the place 
that they build plants wherever it 
seems best — thousands of them — 
and half the time they’re useless, 
when the rains concentrate on an- 
other district. Half of the plants 
are inoperable all the time. Which 
costs money. If they’d build dams, 
they’d have a steady source of power 
without the terrific overhead.” 

“It’s a thought,” Munn acknowl- 
edged. 

Mike Soaring Eagle said, “I’ll 
stick to my crossbreeds in the hy- 
droponic gardens. I can raise beef- 
steak-mushrooms to taste of Worces- 
tershire sauce or something. An ap- 



peal to the palate, you know — ” 
“Fair enough. Steve?” 

Thirkell rumpled his hair. “I’ll 
think of an angle. Don’t rush me.” 
Munn looked at Underhill. “Any 
flashes of intellect, chum?” 

The youngster grimaced. “Not 
just now. All I can think of is ma- 
nipulating the stock market.” 
“Without money?” 

“That’s the trouble.” 

Munn nodded. “Well, my own 
idea is advertising. As a physicist, 
it’s in my line.” 

“How?” Bronson wanted to 
know. “Demonstrating atom- 
smashing? A strong-man act?” 
“Pipe down. Advertising isn’t 
known on Venus, though commerce 
is. That’s funny. I should think 
the retailers would jump at the 
chance.” 

“They’ve got radio commercials.” 
“Stylized and ritualistic. Their 
televisors are ready-made for splash 
advertising. A visual blurb . . . 
yeah. Trick gadgets I could make 
to demonstrate the products. Why 
not?” 

“I think I’ll build an X-ray ma- 
chine,” Thirkell said suddenly, “if 
you’ll help me, skipper.” 

Munn said sure. “We’ve got the 
equipment — and the blueprints. To- 
morrow we’ll start. It must be 
pretty late.” 

It was, though there was no sun- 
set on Venus. The quintet retired, 
to dream of full-course dinners — all 
but Thirkell, who dreamed he was 
eating a roast chicken that abruptly 
turned into a Venusian and began 
to devour him, starting at the feet. 



84 



ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 



He woke up sweating and cursing, 
took some nembutyl, and finally 
slept again. 

The next morning they scattered. 
Mike Soaring Eagle took a micro- 
scope and other gadgets to the near- 
est hydroponic center and went to 
work. He wasn’t allowed to carry 
spores back to the Goodwill, but 
there was no objection to his experi- 
menting in Vyring itself. He made 
cultures and used forced-growth 
vitamin complexes and hoped for 
the best. 

Pat Bronson went to see Skot- 
tery, head of Water Power. Skot- 
tery was a tall, saturnine Venusian 
who knew a lot about engineering 
and insisted on showing Bronson 
the models in his office before they 
settled down to a talk. 

“How many power stations do 
you have?” Bronson asked. 

“Third power twelve times four 
dozens. Forty-two dozen in this 
district.” 

Nearly a million altogether, Bron- 
son made it. “How many in actual 
operation now?” he carried on. ■ 

“About seventeen dozen.” 

“That means three hundred idle 
— twenty-five dozen, that is. Isn’t 
the upkeep a factor?” 

“Quite a factor,” Skottery ac- 
knowledged. “Aside from the fact 
that some of those stations are now 
permanently inoperable. The ter- 
rain changes rapidly. Erosion, you 
know. We’ll build one station on a 
gorge one year, and the next the 
water will be taking a different 
route. We build about a dozen a 



day. But we salvage something 
from £he old ones, of course.” 
Bronson had a brainstorm. “No 
watershed ?” 

“Eh?” 

The Earthman explained. Skot- 
tery shook his shoulders in nega- 
tion. 

“We have a different type of 
vegetation here. There's so much 
water that roots don’t have to strike 
deeply.” 

“But they need soil ?” 

“No. The elements they need 
are in suspension in the water.” 
Bronson described how water- 
sheds worked. “Suppose you im- 
ported Earth plants and trees and 
forested the mountains. And built 
dams to retain your water. You’d 
have power all the time, and you’d 
need only a few big stations. And 
they’d be permanent.” 

Skottery thought that over. “We 
have all the power we need.” 

“But look at the expense 1” 

“Our rates cover that.” 

“You could make more money — 
difals and sofals — " 

“We have made exactly the same 
profits for three hundred years.” 
Skottery explained. “Our net re- 
mains constant. It works perfectly. 
You fail to understand our economic 
system, I see. Since we have every- 
thing we need, there’s no use mak- 
ing more money — not even a fal 
more.” 

“Your competitors — ” 

“We have only three, and they 
are satisfied with their profits.” 
“Suppose I interest them in my 
plan?" 



THE IRON STANDARD 



85 



“But you couldn’t,” Skottery said 
patiently. "They wouldn’t be inter- 
ested any more than I am. I’m 
glad you dropped in. May you be 
worthy of your father’s name.” 

“Ye soulless fish!” Bronson 
yelled, losing his temper. “Is there 
no red blood in your green-skinned 
carcass ? Does no one on this world 
know what fight means ?” He ham- 
mered a fist into his palm. “I 
wouldn’t be worthy of the old Seu- 
mas Bronson’s name unless I took 
a poke at that ugly phiz of yours 
right now — ” 

Skottery had pressed a button. 
Two large Venusians appeared. 
The head of Water Power pointed 
to Bronson. 

“Remove it,” he said. 

Captain Rufus Munn was in one 
of the telecasting studios with Bart 
Underhill. They were sitting beside 
Hakkapuy, owner of Veetsy — 
which might be freely translated as 
Wet Tingles. They were watching 
the telecast commercial plug for 
Hakkapuy’s product, on the ’visor 
screen high on the wall. 

A Venusian faded in, legs wide 
apart, arms akimbo. He raised one 
hand, six fingers spread wide. 

“All men drink water. Water is 
good. Life needs water. Veetsy is 
good also. Four jals buys a globe 
of Veetsy. That is all.” 

He vanished. Colors rippled 
across the screen and music played 
in off-beat rhythm. Munn turned 
to Hakkapuy. 

“That isn’t advertising. You 
can’t get customers that way.” 



“Well, it’s traditional,” Hakka- 
puy said weakly. 

Munn opened the pack at bis feet, 
brought out a tall glass beaker, and 
asked for a globe of Veetsy. It was 
given him, and he emptied the green 
fluid into his beaker. After that, 
he dropped in a half dozen colored 
balls and added a chunk of dry ice, 
which sank to the bottom. The balls 
went up and down rapidly. 

“See?” Munn said. “'Visual ef- 
fect. The marbles are only slightly 
heavier than Veetsy. It’s the visual 
equivalent of Wet Tingles. Show 
that on the televisor, with a good 
sales talk, and see how your sales 
curve jumps.” 

Hakkapuy looked interested. “I’m 
not sure — ” 

Munn dragged out a sheaf of pa- 
pers and hammered at the breach in 
the wall. After a time a fat Venus- 
ian came in and said, “May you be 
worthy of your ancestors’ names.” 
Hakkapuy introduced him as Lo- 
rish. 

“I thought Lorish had better see 
this. Would you mind going over 
it again ?” 

“Sure,” Munn said. “Now the 
principle of display windows — ” 

When he had finished, Hakkapuy 
looked at Lorish, who shook his 
shoulders slowly. 

“No,” he said. 

Hakkapuy blew out his lips. “It 
would sell more Veetsy.” 

“And upset the economy charts,” 
Lorish said. “No.” 

Munn glared at him. “Why not ? 
Hakkapuy owns Veetsy, doesn't he? 
Who are you, anyhow — a censor?” 



86 



ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 



"I represent the advertisers' tar - 
komar,” Lorish explained. “You 
see. advertising on Venus is strongly 
ritual. It is never changed. Why 
should it be? If we let Hakkapuy 
use your ideas, it would be unfair 
to other makers of soft drinks.” 

“They could do the same thing,” 
Munn pointed out. 

“A pyramiding competition lead- 
ing to ultimate collapse. Hakkapuy 
makes enough money. Don’t you, 
Hakkapuy ?’’ 

“I suppose so.” 

“Are you questioning the motives 
of the lark omars ?” 

Hakkapuy gulped. “No,” he said 
hastily. “No, no, no! You’re per- 
fectly right.” 

Lorish looked at him. “Very 
well. As for you, Earthman, you 
had better not waste your time pur- 
suing this — scheme — further." 

Munn reddened. “Are you 
threatening me?” 

“Of course not. I simply mean 
that no advertiser could use your 
idea without consulting my tarko- 
mar , and we would veto it." 

“Sure,” Munn said. “O. K. 
Come on, Beit. Let’s get out of 
here.” 

They departed, to stroll along a 
canal bank and confer. Underhill 
was thoughtful. 

“The tarkomars have held the 
balance of power for a long time, it 
looks like. They want things to 
stay as they are. That's obvious." 

Munn growled. 

Underhill went on, “We’d have to 
upset the whole apple cart to get 



anywhere. There’s one thing in our 
favor, though.” 

“What?" 

“The laws.” 

“How do you figure that out?” 
Munn asked. “They’re all against 
us.” 

“So far — yes. But they’re tradi- 
tionally rigid and unswerving. A 
decision made three hundred years 
ago can’t be changed except by a 
long court process. If we can find 
a loophole in those laws, they can’t 
touch us.” 

“All right, find the loophole,” 
Munn said grumpily. “I’m going 
back to the ship and help Steve build 
an N-ray machine.” 

“I think I’ll go down to the stock 
exchange and snoop," Underhill 
said. “It’s just possible — ” 

After a week, the X-ray device 
was finished. Munn and Thirkell 
looked through the Vyring law rec- 
ords and found they were permit- 
ted to sell a self-created device with- 
out belonging to a tarkonwr, 
provided they obeyed certain trivial 
restrictions. Leaflets were printed 
and strewed around the city, and 
the Venusians came to watch Munn 
and Thirkell demonstrating the mer- 
its of Roentgen rays. 

Mike Soaring Eagle knocked off 
work for the day and recklessly 
smoked a dozen cigarettes from his 
scanty store, burning with dull fury 
as he puffed. He had run into trou- 
ble with his hydroponic cultures. 

“Crazy!” he told Bronson. “Lu- 
ther Burbank would have gone nuts 
— the way I’m going. How the devil 



THE IRON STANDARD 



87 




can I cross-pollenate those ambigu- 
ous specimens of Venusian flora?” 
“Well, it doesn’t seem exactly 
fair,” Bronson consoled. “Eighteen 
sexes, eh?” 

“Eighteen so far. And four va- 



rieties that apparently haven't any 
sex at all. How can you cross- 
breed those perverted mushrooms? 
You’d have to exhibit the result in 
a side show.” 

“You're getting nowhere?” 



88 



ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 




“Oil, I’m getting places,” Mike 
Soaring Eagle said bitterly. “I’m 
getting all sorts of results. The 
trouble is nothing stays constant. I 
get a rum-flavored fungus one day, 
and it doesn’t breed true — its spores 
turn into something that tastes like 
turpentine. So you see.” 

Bronson looked sympathetic. 
“Can’t you swipe some grub when 
they’re not looking? That way the 
job wouldn't be a complete wash- 
out.” 

“They search me,” the Navaho 
said. 

“The dirty skunks,” Bronson 
yelped. “What do they think we 
are? Crooks?” 

“Mph. Something's going on 
outside. Let’s take a look.” 

They went out of the Goodwill to 
find Munn arguing passionately 
with Jorust, who had come in per- 
son to examine the X-ray machine. 
A crowd of Venusians watched 
avidly. Munn's face was crimson. 

“I looked it up,” he was saying. 
“You can’t stop me this time, Jorust. 
It’s perfectly legal to build a ma- 
chine and sell it outside the city lim- 
its.” 

“Certainly,” Jorust said. “I'm 
not complaining about that.” 

“Well? We’re not breaking any 
law.” 

The woman beckoned, and a fat 
Vensuian waddled forward. “Pat- 
ent three gross squared fourteen two 
dozen, issued to Metzi-Stang of My- 
losh year fourth power twelve, sub- 
ject sensitized plates.” 

“What’s that ?” Munn asked. 

“It’s a patent,” Jorust told him. 



“It was issued some time ago to a 
Venusian inventor named Metzi- 
Stang. A tarkomar bought and sup- 
pressed the process, but it’s still il- 
legal to infringe on it.” 

“You mean somebody’s already 
invented an X-ray machine on Ve- 
nus?” 

“No. Merely sensitized film. But 
that's part of your device, so you 
can't sell it.” 

Thirkell pushed forward. “I 
don't need film — ” 

The fat Venusian said, “Vibra- 
tionary patent three gross two dozen 
and seven — ” 

“What now?” Munn broke in. 

Jorust smiled. “Machines em- 
ploying vibration must not infringe 
on that patent.” 

“This is an X-ray machine,” 
Thirkell snapped. 

“Light is vibration,” Jorust told 
him. “You can’t sell it without buy- 
ing permission from the tarkomar 
now owning that patent. It should 
cost — let’s see — five thousand sofals 
or so.” 

Thirkell turned abruptly and went 
into the ship, where he mixed a 
whiskey-and-soda and thought wist- 
fully about diphtheria germs. After 
a time the others appeared, looking 
disconsolate. 

“Can she do it?” Thirkell asked. 

Munn nodded. “She can do it, 
chum. She’s done it.” 

“We’re not infringing on their 
patents.” 

“We’re not on Earth. The patent 
laws here are so wide that if a man 
invents a gun, nobody else can make 



THE IRON STANDARD 



89 



telescopic sights. We’re rooked 
again.” 

Underhill said, “It’s the tarko- 
mars again. When they see a new 
process or invention that might 
mean change, they buy it up and 
suppress it. I can't think of any 
gadget we could make that wouldn’t 
be an infringement on some Venus- 
ian patent or other.’’ 

“They stay within the law,” 
Munn pointed out. “Their law. So 
we can't even challenge them. As 
long as we’re on Venus, we're sub- 
ject to their jurisprudence.” 

“The beans are getting low,” 
Thirkell said morosely. 

“Everything is,” the captain told 
him. “Any ideas, somebody?” 
There was silence. Presently Un- 
derhill took out a globe of Veetsy 
and put it on the table. 

“Where’d you get that?” Bronson 
asked. “It costs four fals.” 

“It’s empty,” Underhill said. “I 
found it in an ash can. I’ve been 
investigating glassite — the stuff they 
use for things like this.” 

“What about it?” 

“I found out how they make it. 
It’s a difficult, expensive process. 
It’s no better than our flexiglass, 
and a lot harder to make. If we 
had a flexiglass factory here — ” 
“Well?” 

“The bottom would drop out of 
Amalgamated Glassite.” 

“I don’t get it,” Bronson said. 
“So what?” 

“Ever heard of a whispering cam- 
paign?” Underhill asked. “My fa- 
ther wangled many an election that 
way, the old devil. Suppose we 

90 



passed the word around that there 
was a new process for making a 
cheaper, better substitute for glass- 
ite? Wouldn’t Amalgamated stock 
drop?” 

“Possibly,” Munn said. 

“We could clean up.” 

“What with ?” 

“Oh.” Underhill was silent. “It 
takes money to make money.” 

“Always.” 

“I wonder. Here’s another idea. 
Venus is on the iron standard. 
Iron's cheap on Earth. Suppose we 
talked about bringing in iron here — 
strewing it broadcast. There’d be 
a panic, wouldn’t there?” 

“Not without some iron to strew 
around,” Munn said. “Counter- 
propaganda would be telecast; we 
couldn’t compete with it. Our whis- 
pering campaign would be squashed 
before we got it started. The Ve- 
nusian government — the tarkomars 
— would simply deny that Earth had 
unlimited iron supplies. We would- 
n't profit, anyway.” 

“There must be some angle,” Un- 
derhill scowled. “There’s got to be. 
Let’s see. What’s the basis of the 
Venusian system ?” i 

“No competition,” Mike Soaring 
Eagle said. “Everybody has all he 
wants.” 

“Maybe. At the top. But the 
competitive instinct is too strong to 
be suppressed like that. I’ll bet 
plenty of Venusians would like to 
make a few extra fals.” 

“Where does that get us?” Munn 
wanted to know. 

“The way my father did it. . . . 

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 



Hm-m-m. He manipulated, pulled 
the wires, made people come to him. 
What’s the weak spot in Venusian 
economy ?” 

Munn hesitated. “Nothing we 
can strike at — we’re too handi- 
capped. - ' 

Underhill shut his eyes. “The 
basis of an economic and social sys- 
tem is — what?” 

"Money,” Bronson said. 

“No. Earth’s on the radium 
standard. Years ago it was gold or 
silver. Venus is on iron. And 
there’s the barter system, too. Mon- 
ey’s a variable.’’ 

“Money represents natural re- 
sources — ” Thirkell began. 

“Man-hours,” Munn put in qui- 
etly. 

Underhill jumped. “That’s it! 
Of course — man-hours ! That’s the 
constant. The amount of produc- 
tion a man can turn out in an hour 
represents an arbitrary constant — 
two dollars, a dozen difals, or what- 
ever it is. That’s the base for any 
economic set-up. And it’s the base 
we’ve got to hit. The ancestor wor- 
ship, the power of the tarkomars — 
they’re superficial really. Once the 
basic system is challenged, they’ll 
go down.” 

“I don’t see where it gets us,” 
Thirkell said. 

“Make the man-hours variable.” 
Underhill explained. “Once we do 
that, anything can happen.” 

“Something had better happen,” 
Bronson said, “and quick. We’ve 
little food left." 

“Shut up,” Munn said. “I think 
the kid’s got the right angle. Alter 



the man-hour constant, eh? How 
can we do that ? Specialized train- 
ing? Train a Venusian to turn out 
twice as much stuff in the same pe- 
riod of time? Skilled labor?” 

“They’ve got skilled labor.” Un- 
derhill said. “If we could make ’em 
work faster, or increase their stami- 
na — ” 

“Benzedrine plus,” Thirkell inter- 
rupted. “With enough caffeine, 
vitamin complex, and riboflavin — I 
could whip up a speeder-upper, all 
right.” 

Munn nodded slowly. “Pills, not 
shots. If this works out, we'll have 
to do it undercover after a while.” 

“What the devil will it get us to 
make the Venusiaus work faster?” 
Bronson asked. 

Underhill snapped his fingers. 
“Don’t you see? Venus is ultra- 
conservative. The economic system 
is frozen static. It isn’t adapted to 
change. There’ll be hell popping!” 

Munn said, “We’ll need advertis- 
ing to arouse public interest first of 
all. A practical demonstration.” 
He looked around the table, his gaze 
settling on Mike Soaring Eagle. 
“Looks like you’re elected, Redskin. 
You’ve more stamina than any of 
us, according to the tests we took 
back on Earth.” 

“All right,” the Navaho said. 
“What do I do?” 

“Work!” Underhill told him. 
“Work till you drop !” 

It began early the next morning 
in the main plaza of Vyringi Munn 
had checked up carefully, deter- 
mined to make sure nothing would 



THE IKON STANDARD 



• 1 



go wrong, and had learned that a 
recreation building was to be con- 
structed on the site of the plaza. 
“Work won’t start for several 
weeks,” Tortist said. "Why?” 

"We want to dig a hole there,” 
Munn said. ‘‘Is it legal?” 

The Venusian smiled. “Why, of 
course. That’s public domain — un- 
til the contractors begin. But a 
demonstration of your muscular 
prowess won't help you, I’m afraid.” 

"Eh?” 

“I’m not a fool. You're trying 
to land a job. You hope to do that 
by advertising your abilities. But 
why do it in just this way? Any- 
body can dig a hole. It isn’t spe- 
cialized.” 

Munn grunted. If Jorust wanted 
to jump at that conclusion, swell. 
He said, “It pays to advertise. Put 
a steam shovel to work, back on 
Earth, and a crowd will gather to 
watch it. We don't have a steam 
shovel, but — ” 

"Well, whatever you like. Le- 
gally you’re within your rights. 
Nevertheless you can’t hold a job 
without joining a tarkomar.” 

“Sometimes I think your planet 
would be a lot better off without the 
tarkomars,” Munn said bluntly. 

Jorust moved her shoulders. 
“Between ourselves, I have often 
thought so. I am merely an ad- 
ministrator, however. I have no 
real power. I do what I'm told to 
do. If I were permitted, I would be 
glad to lend you the money you 
need—” 

“What?” Munn looked at her. 
"I thought — ” 



The woman froze. “It is not per- 
mitted. Tradition is not always wis- 
dom, but I can do nothing about it. 
To defy the tarkomars is unthink- 
able and useless. I am sorry.” 

Munn felt a little better after that, 
somehow. The Venusians weren’t 
all enemies. The all-powerful tar- 
komars, jealous of their power, fa- 
natically desirous of preserving the 
status quo, were responsible for this 
mess. 

When he got back to the plaza, 
the others were waiting. Bronson 
had rigged up a scoreboard, in pho- 
netic Venusian, and had laid out 
mattock, pick, shovel, wheelbarrow 
and boards for the Navaho, who 
stood, a brawny, red-bronze figure, 
stripped to the waist in the cool 
wind. A few canalboats had stopped 
to watch. 

Munn looked at his watch. 
“O. K., Redskin. Let’s go. Steve 
can start — ” 

Underhill began to beat a drum. 
Bronson put figures on the score- 
board: 4:03:00, Venusian Vyring 
Time. Thirkell went to a nearby 
camp table, littered with bottles 
and medical equipment, shook from 
a vial one of the stimulant pills he 
had concocted, and gave it to Mike 
Soaring Eagle. The Indian ate it, 
heaved up the mattock, and went to 
work. 

That was all. 

A man digging a hole. Just why 
the spectacle should be so fascinat- 
ing no one has ever figured out. 
The principle remains the same, 
whether it’s a steam shovel scooping 
out half a ton of earth at a bite, or 



92 



ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 



a sweating, stocky Navaho wielding 
shovel and pick. The boats grew 
thicker. 

Mike Soaring Eagle kept work- 
ing. An hour passed. Another. 
There were regular, brief rest pe- 
riods, and Mike kept rotating his 
tools, to get all his muscles into play. 
After breaking earth for a while 
with the mattock, he would shovel it 
into the wheelbarrow, roll his bur- 
den up a plank and dump it on an 
ever-growing pile some distance 
away. Three hours. Four. Mike 
• knocked off for a brief lunch. Bron- 
son kept track of the time on his 
scoreboard. 

Thirkell gave the Navajo another 
pill. “How’re you doing?” 

“Fine. I’m tough enough." 

“I know, but these stimulants — 
they’ll help.” 

Underhill was at a typewriter. 
He had already ground out a tre- 
mendous lot of copy, for he had been 
working since Mike Soaring Eagle 
started. Bronson had discovered a 
long-forgotten talent and was jug- 
gling makeshift Indian clubs and 
colored balls. He'd been keeping 
that up for quite a while, too. 

Captain Rufus Munn was work- 
ing a sewing machine. He didn’t 
especially like the task, but it was 
precision work, and therefore help- 
ful to the plan. All the. party ex- 
cept Thirkell was doing something, 
and the physician was busy admin- 
istering pills and trying to look like 
an alchemist. 

Occasionally he visited Munn and 
Underhill, collected stacks of paper 
and carefully sewn scraps of cloth. 



and deposited them in various boxes 
near the canal, labeled, “Take One.” 
On the cloth a legend was machine- 
embroidered in Venusian: “A Sou- 
venir from Earth.” The crtrwds 
thickened. 

The Earthmen worked on. Bron- 
son kept juggling, with pauses for 
refreshment. Eventually he experi- 
mented with coin and card tricks. 
Mike Soaring Eagle kept digging. 
Munn sewed. Underhill continued 
to type — and the Venusians read 
what his flying fingers turned out. 

“Free! Free! Free!” the leaf- 
lets said. “Souvenir pillowcase cov- 
ers from Earth ! A free show ! 
Watch the Earthmen demonstrate 
stamina, dexterity and precision in 
four separate ways. How long can 
they keep it up? With the aid of 
POWER PILLS— indefinitely! 

Their output is doubled and their 
precision increased by POWER 
PILLS — they pep you up! A medi- 
cal product of Earth that can make 
any man worth twice his weight in 
sofa/s f” 

It went on like that. The old army 
game — with variations. The Venus- 
ians couldn’t resist. Word got 
around. The mob thickened. How 
long could the Earthmen keep up 
the pace? 

They kept it up. Thirkell's stim- 
ulant pills — as well as the complex 
shots he had given his companions 
that morning — seemed to be work- 
ing. Mike Soaring Eagle dug like 
a beaver. Sweat poured from his 
shining red-bronze torso. He drank 
prodigiously and ate salt tablets. 



THE IRON STANDARD 



93 



Munn kept sewing, without miss- 
ing a stitch. He knew that his prod- 
ucts were being scanned closely for 
signs of sloppy workmanship. 
Bronson kept juggling and doing 
coin tricks, never missing. Under- 
hill typed with aching fingers. 

Five hours. Six hours. Even 
with the rest periods, it was gruel- 
ing. They had brought food from 
the Goodwill, but it wasn’t too pal- 
atable. Still, Thirkell had selected 
it carefully for caloric. 

Seven hours. Eight hours. The 
crowds made the canals impassable. 
A policeman came along and ar- 
gued with Thirkell, who told him to 
see Jorust. Jorust must have put a 
flea in his ear, for he came back to 
watch, but not to interfere. 

Nine hours. Ten hours. Ten 
hours of Herculean effort. The 
men were exhausted — but they kept 
going. 

They had made their point by 
then, though, for a few Venusians 
approached Thirkell and inquired 
about the Power Pills. What were 
they? Did they really make you 
work faster? How could they buy 
the — 

The policeman appeared to stand 
beside Thirkell. “I’ve a message 
from the medical tarkomar,” he an- 
nounced. “If you try to sell any of 
those things, you go to jail.’’ 

“Wouldn’t think of it,” Thirkell 
said. “We’re giving away free sam- 
ples. Here, buddy.” He dug- into 
a sack and tossed the nearest Ve- 
nusian a Power Pill. “Two days’ 
work in that instead of your usual 
one. Come back for more tomor- 

94 



row. \\&nt one, pal ? Here. You, 
too. Catch.” 

“Wait a minute — ” the policeman 
said. 

“Go get a warrant,” Thirkell told 
him. “There’s no law against mak- 
ing presents.” 

Jorust appeared with a burly, in- 
tolerant-looking Venusian. She in- 
troduced the latter as head of the 
Vyring tarkomars. 

“And I’m here to tell you to stop 
this,” the Venusian said. 

Thirkell knew what to say. His 
companions kept on with their work, 
but he felt them watching and lis- 
tening. 

“What rule do you invoke?” 

“Why . . . why, peddling.” 

“I’m not selling anything. This 
is public domain; we’re putting on 
a free show.” 

“Those . . . ah . . . Power Pills — ” 

“Free gifts,” Thirkell said. “Lis- 
ten, pal. When we gave all our 
food to you Venusian crooks, did 
you squaw? No, you took it. And 
then clamped down. When we 
asked for our grub back, you just 
told us that we had no legal re- 
course; possession is nine points of 
the law, and we had a perfect right 
to make free gifts. That’s what 
we’re doing now — giving presents. 
So what?” 

Jorust’s eyes were twinkling, but 
she hooded them swiftly. “I fear 
he speaks the truth. The law pro- 
tects him. It is no great harm.” 

Thirkell, watching her, wondered. 
Had Jorust guessed the right an- 
swer? Was she on their side? The 
tarkomar leader turned dark green, 

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 




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hesitated, swung on his heel, and 
went away. Jorust gave the Earth- 
men a long, enigmatic look, moved 
her shoulders, and followed. 

“I’m still stiff,” Mike Soaring 
Eagle said a week later in the Good- 
will. “Hungry, too. When do we 
get grub?” 

Thirkell, at the valve, handed out 
a Power Pill to a Venusian and 
came back rubbing his hands and 
grinning. “Wait. Just wait. What’s 
going on, skipper?” 

Munn nodded toward Underhill. 
“Ask the kid. He got back from 
Vyring a few minutes ago.” 

Underhill chuckled. “There was 
hell popping. All in a week, too. 
We’ve certainly struck at the eco- 
nomic base. Every Venusian who 
labors on a piecework basis wants 
our pills, so he can speed up his pro- 
duction and make more jals. It’s 
the competitive instinct — which is 
universal.” 

“Well?” Bronson asked. “How 
do the lizard-faced big shots like 
that ?” 

“They don’t like it. It's hit the 
economic set-up they’ve had for cen- 
turies. Till now, one Venusian 
would make exactly ten sojals- a 
week — say — by turning out five 
thousand bottle caps. With the pills 
Steve made up, he’s turning out 
eight or ten thousand and making 
correspondingly more dough. The 
guy at the next bench says what the 
hell, and comes to us for a Power 
Pill for himself. Thus it goes. And 
the lovely part is that not all the la- 
bor is on piecework basis. It can't 



be. You need tangibles for piece- 
work. Running a weather machine 
has got to be measured by time — 
not by how many raindrops you 
make in a day.” 

Munn nodded. “Jealousy, you 
mean ?” 

Underhill said, “Well, look. A 
weather-machine operator has been 
making ten sojals a week, the same 
as a bottle capper on piecework. 
Now the bottle capper’s making 
twenty sojals. The weather-ma- 
chine man doesn’t see the point. 
He's willing to take Power Pills, 
too, but that won’t step up his pro- 
duction. He asks for a raise. If 
he gets it, the economy is upset even 
more. If he doesn’t, other weather- 
machine operators get together with 
him and figure it’s unfair discrimi- 
nation. They get mad at the tarko- 
mars. They strike!” 

Mike Soaring Eagle said, “The 
tarkomars have forbidden work to 
any Venusian taking Power Pillls.” 
"And still the Venusians ask us 
for Power Pills. So what? How 
can you prove a man’s been swal- 
lowing them? His production steps 
up, sure, but the tarkomars can’t 
clamp down on everybody with a 
good turnout. They tried that, and 
a lot of guys who never tried the 
Power Pills got mad. They were 
fast workers, that was all.” • 

“The demonstration we put on 
was a good idea,” Thirkell said. “It 
was convincing. I’ve had to cut 
down the strength of the pills — 
we’re running low — but the power 
of suggestion helps us.” 

Underhill grinned. "So the base 

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 



— the man-hour unit — had gone 
cockeyed. One little monkey 
wrench, thrown where it’ll do the 
most good. It’s spreading, too. 
Not only Vyring. The news is go- 
ing all over Venus, and the workers 
in the other cities are asking why 
half of Vyring’s laborers should get 
better pay. That’s where the equal 
standard of exchange helps us — one 
monetary system all over Venus. 
Nothing has ever been off par here 
for centuries. Now — ” 

Munn said, “Now the system's 
toppling. It’s a natural fault in a 
perfectly integrated, rigid set-up. 
For want of a nail the tarkomars are 
losing their grip. They’ve forgotten 
how to adjust.” 

“It’ll spread,” Underhill said con- 
fidently. “It’ll spread. Steve, here 
comes another customer.” 

Underhill was wrong. Jorust 
and the Vyring tarkomar leader 
came in. “May you be worthy of 
your ancestors’ names,” Munq said 
politely. “Drag up a chair and have 
a drink. We’ve still got a few bulbs 
of beer left.” 

Jorust obeyed, but the Venusian 
rocked on his feet and glowered. 
The woman said, “Malsi is dis- 
tressed. These Power Pills are 
causing trouble.” 

“I don’t know why,” Munn said. 
“They increase production, don’t 
they?” 

Malsi grimaced. “This is a trick ! 
A stratagem ! You are abusing our. 
hospitality !” 

“What hospitality?” Bronson 
wanted to know. 



“You threatened the system,” 
Malsi plunged on doggedly. “On 
Venus there is no change. There 
must be none.” 

“Why not?” Underhill asked. 
“There’s only one real reason, and 
you know it. Any advances might 
upset the tarkomars — threaten the 
power they hold. You racketeers 
have had the whip hand for centu- 
ries. You've suppressed inventions, 
kept Venus in a backwater, tried to 
drive initiative out of the race, just 
so you could stay on top. It can’t 
be done. Changes happen ; they al- 
ways do. If we hadn’t come, there'd 
have been an internal explosion 
eventually.” 

Malsi glared at him. “You will 
stop making these Power Pills.” 
“Point of law,” Thirkell said 
softly. “Show precedent.” 

Jorust said, "The right of free gift 
is one of the oldest on Venus. That 
law could be changed, Malsi, but I 
don’t think the people would like it.” 
Munn grinned. “No. They 
wouldn't. That would be the tip- 
off. Venusians have learned it's 
possible to make more money. Take 
that chance away from them, and 
the tarkomars won’t -be the benevo- 
lent rulers any more.” 

Malsi turned darker green. “We 
have power — ” 

“Jorust, you’re an administrator. 
Are we protected by your lasvs?” 
Underhill asked. 

She moved her shoulders. “Yes, 
you are. The laws are sacrosanct. 
Perhaps because they have always 
been designed to protect the tarko- 
mars.” - ...<■ 



THE IRON STANDARD 



07 



Malsi swung toward her. "Are 
you siding with the Earthmen?” 
“Why, of course not, Malsi. I’m 
merely upholding the law, according 
to ijiy oath of office. Without preju- 
dice — that's it, isn’t it?” 

Munn said, “We’ll stop making 
the Power Pills if you like, but I 
warn you that it’s only a respite. 
You can’t halt progress.” 

Malsi seemed unconvinced. 
“You'll stop?” 

“Sure. If you pay us.” 

“We cannot pay you,” Malsi said 
stubbornly. “You belong to no tar- 
komar. It would be illegal.” 

Jorust murmured, “You might 
give them a free gift of — say — ten 
thousand sojals.” 

“Ten thousand !” Malsi yelped. 
“Ridiculous !’’ 

“So it is,” Underhill said. “Fifty 
thousand is more like it. We can 
live well for a year on that.” 

“No.” 

A Venusian came to the valve, 
peeped in, and said : “I made twice 
as many difals today. May I have 
another Power Pill?” He saw 
Malsi and vanished with a small 
shriek. 

Munn shrugged. “Suit yourself. 
Pay up, or we go on handing out 
Power Pills — and you’ll have to ad- 
just a rigid social economy. I don't 
think you can do it.” 

Jorust touched Malsi’s arm. 
“There is no other way.” 

“I — » jj ie Venusian by now was 
almost black with impotent rage. 
“All right,” he capitulated, spitting 

THE 



the words between his teeth. "I 
won’t forget this, Jorust.” 

“But I must administer the laws,” 
the woman said. “Why, Malsi! 
The rule of the tarkomars has al- 
ways been unswerving honesty.” 
Malsi didn’t answer. He scrib- 
bled a credit check for fifty thousand 
sojals, validated it, and gave the tag 
to Munn. After that he sent a part- 
ing glare around the cabin and 
stamped out. 

“Well!” Bronson said. “Fifty 
grand ! Tonight we eat !” 

“May you be worthy of your fa- 
thers’ names,” Jorust murmured. 
At the valve she turned. “I’m afraid 
you’ve upset Malsi.” 

“Too bad,” Munn said hypocriti- 
cally. 

Jorust moved her shoulders 
slightly. “Yes. You’ve upset Malsi. 
And Malsi represents the tarko- 
mars — ” 

“What can he do about it?” Un- 
derhill asked. 

“Nothing. The laws won't let 
him. But — it’s nice to know the 
tarkomars aren’t infallible. I think 
the word will get around.” 

Jorust winked gravely at Munn 
and departed, looking as innocent 
as a cat, and as potentially danger- 
ous. 

“Well!” Munn said. “What does 
that mean? The end of the tarko- 
mars’ rule, maybe?” 

“Maybe,” Bronson said. “I don’t 
give a damn. I’m hungry and I 
want a beefsteak-mushroom. Where 
can we cash a check for fifty 
grand ?” 

END. 



08 



ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 




Elementary, of Course 



It's a problem in subzero engineering 
to the Wright Aeronautical Co. test en- 
gineer, an airplane power plant to most 
people, but it’s also a fairly complete 
assembly of samples of the ninety-two 
elements of the chemical universe. Go- 
ing down the table of elements, you can 
start with hydrogen — in the gasoline, of 
course, but also in the various plastic 
engine parts — and count in helium. They 
use helium in a new electric-arc welding 
method for working magnesium, the 
helium serving to prevent oxidation and 
to cool the metal ; there will be some 
trapped in the magnesium. Lithium may 
be present in ceramic material, but we’ll 
have to skip it officially. Beryllium- 
bronze makes unsurpassed electrical- 
contact springs. Boro-silicate ceramics 
are excellent for insulating purposes, and 
you can find carbon in the steel, as well 
as the plastic parts and gasoline. Nitro- 
gen goes into plastics, and into case- 
hardening steel parts. Oxygen in com- 
bined form makes the ceramic parts 
possible ; in free form it makes the whole 
proposition possible. Fluorine probably 
isn't used in the engine, but it’s a fair bet 
the cooling system of the subzero test 
chamber uses a ehloro-fluoro substituted 
hydrocarbon as the coolant. Neon is 
probably used in the test instruments, but 
not in the engine. Sodium, magnesium, 
aluminum and silicon can all be found 
in the ceramic parts, silicon-steel in elec- 
trical equipment, and metallic sodium 
magnesium and aluminum in the engine 
structure. (Yes — metallic sodium. It's 
a wonderful cooling medium — if the thing 
you want to cool is hot enough. It has 
the highest heat of volitilization of any 
available substance, and makes possible 
the enormous power-per-cylinder of the 
modern engine by cooling the exhaust 
valves.) Phosphor-bronze electrical con- 
tact springs are standard where extreme 
stresses don’t require the costlier bcryl- 
liutn-bronze. Sulphur is the old standby 
in rubber vulcanization. Some of the 
oil-resistant synthetic rubber used is a 
chlorine compound. 

too 



You'll find argon in test equipment 
along with neoi). Potassium and calcium 
play several parts. The storage battery 
plates contain considerable calcium — it 
hardens and toughens lead. The bear- 
ings probably would yield some, too. 
Scandium we skip. Titanium as an alloy 
element in steel is growing in importance, 
and the dioxide is used in protective 
paints and ceramics. Vanadium, chro- 
mium, manganese, iron, cobalt and nickel 
are all in the various alloy steels needed. 
Copper, zinc, and arsenic are used as 
metals or alloy ingredients. (Arsenic 
and antimony are helping to replace scarce 
tin in solders.) Selenium probably 
sneaked in as an impurity only, but bro- 
mine is essential for the heavily doped 
gasoline. 

Krypton and rubidium we'll skip; the 
latter is probably present as an impurity 
in the ceramics, though. Strontium may 
or may not be used in the ceramic parts, 
but it will certainly accompany the engine 
in a plane; it’s standard in signal flares 
of various sorts which all pilots carry. 
Yttrium is skipped. Zirconium is being 
used in some very special alloy steels, 
and zirconium oxide — zircons — in sonic 
instrument bearings. Columbium, because 
of its platinumlike resistance to chemical 
activity, may have played a background 
part, but not in the engine itself. Molyb- 
denum's there all right, and there are 
probably some rhodium and palladium- 
plated parts either in the engine or its 
accessories. Silver would be present in 
still greater quantity if the Silver Bloc 
didn’t object to such crass, utilitarian 
work for their pet metal. As is, you’ll 
find silver in electrical parts as a con- 
ductor, as a soldering alloy ingredient, in 
bearings, and elsewhere. 

There isn’t space to discuss all the ele- 
ments, but cadmium, tin, antimony, 
barium, lanthanum, cerium, tungsten, 
platinum, iridium, gold, mercury, lead, 
bismuth, radium, polonium, and thorium 
all play parts, either directly in the en- 
gine, or in direct support of its manufac- 
ture. And the engineer’s first-aid kit, like 
the pilot's, is incomplete without iodine. 

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 



Penicillium notation mold, the only now-known sonrcc of penicillin, grow- 
ing in gallon-jug culture bottles at the E. K. Squibb & Sons laboratory. 

Master Chemist 

by Arthur McCann 

Life is an immensely intricate chemical process, so producing in- 
tricate chemical substances is an old story. But living microorgan- 
isms can be bred to produce desired substances — needed drugs — 



MASTER CHEMIST 



1 0 1 



/ 



One of the oldest biochemical in- 
dustries known to man — and quite 
probably the oldest — is based on the 
busy little yeast plant. Since man 
was a nomad before he planted 
grains and made bread, the discov- 
ery that yeast could also be used to 
make bread a food for all, rather 
than the diet of strong-jawed he- 
men, was probably accidental. Since 
that long-gone day. beer and bread 
have gone down through man's his- 
tory together — and the chances are 
exceedingly strong we'll leave bread 
behind before we leave the industri- 
ous little yeast plant. Brewers 
have for many years produced 
baker's yeast and other products. 
They have, naturally, done an im- 
mense amount of research on the 
possibilities of various strains of 
yeasts, the best chemical and physi- 
cal conditions for mass production 
of each type, and the possible prod- 
ucts obtainable from yeast. 

There are a number of purely 
chemical methods of producing al- 
cohol — partial oxidation of petro- 
leum gases, a catalytic hydration of 
acetylene, and half a dozen others. 
But yeast fermentation of cheap 
glucose solutions such as sugar-re- 
finery. by-products, blackstrap mo- 
lasses, and the like remains domi- 
nant. Fermentation of grain mashes 
is, of course, the main source of 
beverage alcohol, but beverage alco- 
hol is a comparatively minor busi- 
ness — as the current war consump- 
tion of industrial alcohol has made 
plain to most people. The chemi- 
cal substance ethanol — ethyl alcohol, 
grain alcohol, call it what you will — 

102 



is a first-rate solvent, a cheap start- 
ing material for many synthetic 
processes, a highly important anti- 
septic, and a first-rate fuel for special 
purposes. Biochemical processes 
carried out by the yeast plant are 
sufficiently efficient to keep that 
method of production in business 
for all the competition of other syn- 
thetic processes. 

Biochemistry is, and can be, a 
large-scale, cheap, and efficient 
method of producing organic com- 
pounds — particularly microbiologi- 
cal methods, involving microscopic 
life-units rather than larger organ- 
isms. Of course, lumber is a bio- 
chemical business in one sense — but 
large biological units, trees, are in- 
volved. The microbiological proc- 
esses have several great advantages 
that put them on a par with straight, 
nonvital chemical processes ; their 
microscopic units in immense num- 
bers give a statistical resultant 
rather than an individual-perform- 
ance result, for one thing. A tree 
is a tree is a tree may be poetry, but 
it isn’t fact ; an individual tree has 
decidedly different growth patterns, 
formations, and knot-markings, all 
of which are an acute annoyance to 
the plywood-plane designer, who 
wants identical, predictable perform- 
ance. 

Further, the microbiological proc- 
esses can be handled like any 
batch-process chemical reaction in- 
volving liquids, and, in special cases, 
might be handled on a continuous- 
flow basis. 

The possibilities of these indus- 
trial biochemical processes have 

AS TO CX DING SCIEXCE-FIC T I O X 



been investigated far less thoroughly 
than the nonvital chemical processes 
— and, perhaps, to our considerable 
disadvantage. In the last war, an 
acute shortage of acetone was over- 
come by the installation of a bio- 
chemical process fermenting corn by 
means of a special “yeast” to pro- 
duce the desired acetone — and inci- 
dentally, a considerable quantity of 
heavy alcohols that later led indi- 
rectly to the postwar lacquer indus- 
try, Partial-oxidation techniques 
developed after the war made it pos- 
sible to produce acetone more 
cheaply from hydrocarbon materials, 
and ended that particular industry. 
Ordinarily, straight chemical proc- 
esses can undersell biochemical 
methods when the product is so 
simple a compound ; the success of 
the alcohol industry is a tribute to 
the efficiency of the yeast plants, the 
technicians who run the fermenting 
vats, and the biochemists and bac- 
teriologists who cultivated the yeast 
strains used. (The yeasts bear 
about as much relationship to the 
yeasts of ye goode okle days as a 
modern high-production dairy cow 
bears to the original wild cattle.) 

Biochemical processes, the chemi- 
cal balance of metabolism, are im- 
mensely complex ; they depend on 
intricate and incredibly delicate bal- 
ancing of several hundred unstable, 
highly involved organic molecules 
in a mutual cross-play of instabili- 
ties that comes out as a dynami- 
cally stable system. With such an 
exponential series of increasing 
complexities at work, the production 



of complex organic substances is 
fairly simple. Many compounds 
which seem to involve completely 
unstable intermediate products in 
their synthesis are quite easy for 
biochemical systems to produce — 
what's one more instability in an 
already completely unstable system ? 
Industrial biochemical processes 
are, therefore, apt to have their 
greatest advantage in fields where 
complex and difficult syntheses are 
involved. 

Gluconic acid is one product the 
chemist found extremely difficult, 
but a particular type of mold makes 
quite readily. Calcium gluconate, 
made by this process, is one of the 
few calcium compounds that can be 
injected directly into the blood- 
stream. Quinine, though analyzed 
many years ago. remains, unfortu- 
nately, a monopoly of the cinchona 
tree. Atabrine is the chemist’s best 
— and fairly good, though not as 
good — substitute. 

The sulfa drugs have been im- 
mensely valuable in aiding man's 
natural defenses to overcome infec- 
tion. Thanks to them, it is almost 
impossible to die of the common 
types of pneumonia, and several 
other highly dangerous infections 
are fought with the sulfa drugs 
with almost miraculous effect. But 
the sulfas are essentially toxic — 
they harm the man as well as his 
disease, and they leave untouched 
many another dangerous germ, and 
several types of pneumonia. Penicil- 
lin, derived from the metabolic 
processes of the mold pcnicillium 
notat\tm, is proving to be greatly 



MASTER CHEMIST 



1 OK 



The penicillin produced by the mold's life-proccsses appears in the liquor, 
here being harvested from “ ripe ” cultures. It’s a slow, expensive system. 




bJ b 




till 


| | 


i 





superior to the sulfas as germ killers, 
effective against several types the 
sulfa drugs won't touch, and far 
less toxic to man. 

At present, penicillin is produced 
by an extremely expensive, labori- 



ous and slow method, involving the 
culture of the penicillium mold in 
separate one-gallon culture bottles, 
followed by extraction of the active 
substance from the resultant cul- 
ture liquor. The production per 



104 



ASTOfXDING SCIENCE - FICTIOX 






colony is small, and the mold is sen- 
sitive to temperature changes and 
variations of the culture medium. 
The work is being pressed because 
of the very great value of the penicil- 
lin as a therapeutic agent. 

There are two lines of attack on 
the problem of greater production, 
and both are being followed up 
vigorously. Efforts to analyze the 
structure of the penicillin are being 
made, so that synthesis can be at- 
tempted. There is always the pos- 
sibility that it will turn out to be a 
substance which, like quinine, can- 
not be practically assembled chemi- 
cally. (On the other hand, it may 
turn out to be actually identical with 
some long-known substance, synthe- 
sized years ago, but never con- 
sidered a drug. Nicotinic acid, 
described by chemists years ago, 
turned out to be one of the B-com- 
plex vitamins.) 

The probabilities are, however, 
that analysis will be accomplished, 
and a method of synthesis worked 
out — sometime in the next three 
years. In the meantime, the other 
line of attack is being pushed. 
Penicillium notatum produces peni- 
cillin — but in very small amounts. 
Yeast naturally produces alcohol 
— but also in very small quantity, 
for alcohol is a powerful germicide. 
The highly developed and special- 
ized strains of yeast that can go on 
producing alcohol even when the 
percentage mounts up above fifteen 
percent concentration are yeasts 
bred by very careful selection. The 
home-brew and home-baking yeast 
is a distant relative of the brewer's 



yeast or the baker's yeast. And 
each is a distant relative of the spe- 
cial yeasts bred to produce vitamin 
B complex. 

There is no reason to believe that 
a penicillium mold of immensely in- 
creased yield could not be produced, 
a mutated form that could work in 
vat batches instead of gallon-jug 
batches. A strain that was much 
hardier, and grew at a higher rate. 
It's a life form — and life forms can 
be bred to fit a remarkable range of 
conditions. If a natural environ- 
ment changes, gets tougher and 
tougher, life has to adapt — and all 
life forms remaining on Earth at this 
late date have as the deepest funda- 
mental of their characteristics a 
tremendous ability to adapt, to 
change to fit. 

Commercial brewers have made 
elaborate studies of yeasts. The yeast 
organism is a true plant cell, and like 
all plant cells consumes sugar and 
water and oxygen to produce car- 
bon dioxide and water, if given a 
chance. Being a particularly tough 
specimen of plant cell, it can survive 
even when oxygen is cut off, by oxi- 
dizing sugar with water as the oxi- 
dizing agent. This reaction is the 
one that produces carbon dioxide 
and alcohol. All growing plant 
cells consume oxygen — the leaves of 
a tree do so, too, but a second reac- 
tion in sunlight, producing sugar 
and oxygen from water and carbon 
dioxide and sunlight energy over- 
balances the first reaction. Whether 
tree leaf or yeast cell, chemical en- 
ergy is needed to produce new cell 
tissue. The plant cell differs from 



MASTER CHEMIST 



1 0 5 




Many, of the culture bojtles are needed to produce the tiny ampules of 
concentrated penicillin. Penicillium notatum is a “ natural ” mold; there 
hasn’t been time for selective breeding to produce a high-yield strain. 



the animal cell primarily in its 
ability to consume raw, inorganic 
mineral substances, “raw” chemical 
energy — sugar — and raw water and 
oxygen to produce every complex 
organic compound its metabolism 
requires. The animal cell must be 

106 



ted the already-prepared complex 
proteins to build cells, it must have 
fats as well as sugars, its minerals 
must be carefully tied up in complex 
organic salts. Hemoglobin that 
every mammal must have in its 
blood is a slightly modified chloro- 

a s - r o i; x n i n a s c i R x c k -fiction 



phyl — wherefore every animal must, 
directly or indirectly, consume 
chlorophyl. 

Yeast thrives happily on highly 
impure sugar — it must be impure ; 
the yeast needs the mineral impuri- 
ties — and ammonia. From black- 
strap molasses and the nitrogen of 
ammonia, yeast can make vitamin 
complexes, the proteins and fats it 
needs in its cell structure, and every 
complex enzyme and organic cata- 
lyst required by its metabolism. 

Plant cell or animal cell, some fat 
and some protein is essential. Be- 
cause the animal is mobile, and 
must carry its fuel around with it, 
the animal developed the highly con- 
centrated fuel supplies far more 
than the immobile plant did. ordi- 
narily. But plants sometimes want 
to store energy in concentrated 
form — seeds, for instance — and can 
do. so when necessary. Yeast can 
develop energy-storing strains ; 
yeasts that consume sugar to make 
fats have been known for some time. 
Such yeasts, when dried and 
pressed, yield oils, quite normal 
vegetable oils. 

Recently, a yeast strain has been 
developed which produces proteins 
— regular animal-food proteins. 
This strain has been subdivided, and 
sub-bred for further specializations, 
till strains producing a high concen- 
tration of protein — higher percent- 
age, in fact, than animal tissues — 
have been produced which also pro- 
duce flavor compounds very closely 
akin to those of beef. The resultant 
washed, dried yeast tastes like beef. 



and nourishes like beef ! The tex- 
ture is wrong, naturally — but a 
yeast-beef stew strongly resembles 
the true beef stew in flavor, texture 
and nourishment value. The great 
difference is that the yeast can be 
grown in vats in one-ton lots in 
twelve hours from molasses and am- 
monia. almost without human labor, 
while the cow takes months, acres, 
and much labor. 

Since beef flavor has been pro- 
duced. presumably there is no need 
of monotony. And, of course, no 
particular reason why the flavor- 
strains should be held down to imi- 
tations of known meat flavors ! A 
mixed culture of protein-yeasts and 
fat-yeasts, with some vitamin pro- 
ducers and perhaps some carbohy- 
drate-storing yeasts, should make a 
fairly complete diet, tank-grown 
without hydroponics, for spaceship 
use. 

More immediately, it points up 
the neglected possibilities of breed- 
ing, of selecting, microorganisms to 
produce wanted chemical com- 
pounds of high complexity. Micro- 
organisms are known to be able to 
work successfully on practically 
anything, animal, vegetable, and 
mineral, known to man. A micro- 
organic symbiosis — the lichen part- 
nership — can claw its way into the 
barren, sterile rock to dissolve out 
of that inhospitable medium all the 
nourishment it needs. One of the 
most complex fields of organic 
chemistry — a highly specialized 
field — is the study of lichen acids. 
The lichens produce complex — 
enormously complex — organic acids 



MASTER OH EM 1ST 



107 




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astounding science-fiction 




which are so beautifully and per- 
fectly designed that, though cor- 
rosive enough to chew holes in gran- 
ite — literally! — they do not harm 
the inherently delicate metabolism 
of the lichen partnership. Those 
acids serve to etch mineral food for 
the chlorophyl-bearing algae from 
the rock, yet do not injure the algae ; 
the algae produce sugars from 
which the fungus half of the part- 
nership builds its own tissues, and 
produces the acids. The number of 
known acids is stupendous ; the 
lichen acids alone probably total far 
greater numbers than all the non- 
lichen acids known to chemistry. 
They are marvelously specialized. 

If industrial microbiochemistry 
could harness them, lichen-type 
fungi would almost certainly be 
able to produce undreamed-of and 
highly selective drugs. 

Microorganisms are the alpha 
and omega of life; they were first 
on Earth, and they are the final 
endpoint of life — and everything 
else — on Earth. The soil bacteria 
are the ultimate scavengers, a mixed 
and variegated lot capable of di- 
gesting away any organic matter 
that comes into their realm. They 
reduce it back to its inorganic ele- 
ments, forever carrying on their 
work of purifying the planet — and 

The tiny ampule of penicillin — that 
may mean some man’s life is saved. 
So far, production is so slow, expen- 
sive, and laborious that the armed 
forces still need more; only rare, 
unusual civilian needs can be met. 



keeping themselves alive in the proc- 
ess. Inevitably, they have devel- 
oped digestive ferments on a par, 
for power, with the corrosive lichen 
acids. The ultimate disposal of 
sewage wastes depends on the ac- 
tivities of these harmless — at least 
non-pathogenic — bacteria. They de- 
stroy not only the sewage, but the 
pathogenic microorganisms associ- 
ated with it, having a most com- 
pletely omniverous digestive system. 

Use of those powers has already 
been made. Since a disease-stricken 
animal’s carcass will eventually fall 
to them, they' can destroy not only 
the animal's body, but the disease- 
causing organism as well. By tak- 
ing a hearty, widely mixed collec- 
tion of soil bacteria, and preparing 
a culture of them, fed on a very 
special diet, a powerful therapeutic 
preparation has been derived. Given 
a mixture of all types of soil bac- 
teria. feed them an exclusive diet 
of pneumococcus organisms, say. 
for two years, and most of the soil 
bacteria will starve to death. Those 
that don’t will, obviously, have 
developed a high-power pneu- 
mococcus-digesting enzyme. Suc- 
cessive generations of such cultures 
will eliminate all but the pneumococ- 
cus destroyer. From colonies of 
such selected and specialized bac- 
teria, an extract can be prepared 
which consists largely of that pneu- 
monia-digesting enzyme. 

Soil bacteria can digest anything 
organic. There doesn’t appear any 
sharp limit to the possibilities of 
specialized digesting enzymes such 
Continued on page 178 



MASTER CHEMIST 



109 



Extraterrestrial 

Bacteria 

by Willy Ley 



'he polished surjaee of a nickel-iron meteorite. The characteristic crystal- 
tructure — found only in meteoric metal — is broken in several places by 
lack pits. Several of these pits see re hermetically sealed by solid metal. 






He know, now, that there are 
planets circling other stars. Some 
meteoric, material makes the in- 
terstellar flight-rand life spores 
can be incredibly hard to kill. 
Are all Earth's microorganisms 
native citizens? 



In 1932 Professor Charles B. 
Lipman reported that he had suc- 
ceeded in finding living bacteria in 
meteorites, bacteria which, although 
similar to forms known on Earth, 
had to lie accepted as extraterres- 
trial forms. 

In 1935 the assistant curator of 
geology of the Field Museum of 
Natural History in Chicago, Sliarat 
Kumar Roy, reported that he had 
repeated Professor Lipman’s experi- 
ments. but that his results failed to 
substantiate Lipman’s claims. 

And since then at least five peo- 
ple have written articles or papers 
in which they pointed out that Lip- 
man’s experiments were bound to 
be unsuccessful because of the na- 
ture of meteorites. If meteorites are 
taken to be parts of a broken-up 
planet, the very large majority of 
them could not harbor bacteria, liv- 
ing or dead, because most of the 
meteorites would stem from such 
depths of the planet that there would 



Right. Stony-iron meteorite, pol- 
ished to show structure. This mixed 
structure offers hiding places for life. 

EXTRATERRESTRIAL BACTERIA 




be no bacteria on and in them, even 
if the original planet had been teem- 
ing with life. 

If we, the reasoning ran, imagine 
that the Earth is shattered into a 
gigantic swarm of meteorites by 
some cosmic catastrophe, there 
would be an overwhelming majority 
of iron meteorites over the compara- 
tively small number of stony mete- 
orites from the outer layers. The 
ratio is at least something like 
six thousand to one. And only a 
very small minority of the stony 
meteorites would come from layers 
where bacteria' might have been ex- 
pected before the catastrophe, the 
probable ratio being somewhat less 
"favorable'’ than six thousand to 
one. To find a meteorite with bac- 
teria in its interior would be one of 
those practically impossible lucky 
chances — something like blowing 
up an enemy ammunition dump with 
a single bomb that accidentally broke 
its suspension lug and crashed 
through the closed door of the bomb 
bay in the dark of night. It can 



happen — but it is not wise to count 
on it. 

When Professor Lipman started 
his search for bacteria in meteorites 
the idea that they wight exist was 
a little more than half a century old. 
That meteorites existed at all had 
been definitely established for only 
about a century. But most of that 
century had been the nineteenth cen- 
tury, and ideas had come thick and 
fast during that hundred years, some 
times even faster than nowadays. 

The history of the whole thought 
complex, sketched in outline, had 
been about as follows : Chladni had 
established that meteorites actually 
existed, that these hunks of stone 
and iron which could be analyzed in 
the laboratory were actually of ex- 
traterrestrial origin. Baron Jons 
Jacob Berzelius had just produced 
sound methods of chemical analysis, 
which meant that the chemists could 
go to work. They did and, while 
they found minor differences which 
made it possible to tell a meteorite 




Left, Bacillus subtilis; center, Staphylococcus albus. Both of these have 
been found in crushed meteorites, but both are certainly terrestrial. Right, 
Spirillum rubrum. a reddish bacteria that might be of extraterrestrial origin. 



lie 



A S T O C X DISC SC IE X C E - F I C T I O X 



from similar-looking terrestrial ma- 
terial, they also proved that the ele- 
ments and their combinations were 
actually the same, the differences 
had nothing to do with elements and 
compounds, but with the type of 
crystallization, arrangement of crys- 
tals, proportions of compounds and 
similar tilings. 

Cosmos and Earth began to look 
alike from the chemist's point of 
view, but near the middle of the 
nineteenth century a famous scientist 
still stated that the steady spread of 
knowledge had to stop somewhere, 
that, for example, nobody would 
ever be able to tell the chemical 
composition of the stars. Just 
about seven years after that speech 
had been made Kirchhoff and Bun- 
sen discovered spectroanalysis, the 




chemical composition of the' stars 
became known and was found to 
amount to a mixture of the same 
well-known elements of which the 
more adventurous chemists began to 
grow tired by then. 

That was the astronomical side 
of the story. 

Now the other. 

Early in the' century telescopes 
and microscopes both had acquired 
a higher state of perfection, growing 
in size, but "mainly in performance. 
The existence of bacteria had been 




Left, a " fossil ” from the Solnhofen slate quarries that proved to he simply 
a crystalline growth , and, right, a synthetic dendrite, laboratory grown 
with two glass plates and a thread dipped in a saturated alum solution. 



1 1 a 



E X T K A r FKKKSTRI.U. BACTERIA 



suspected before; now more and 
more became known about them. 
Finally Louis Pasteur proved that 
certain bacteria caused certain dis- 
eases while others were definitely 
beneficial to human needs. And 
while Kirchhoff and Bunsen and 
those chemists who analyzed mete- 
orites proved that the visible uni- 
verse consists of the same elements, 
Charles Darwin and his collabora- 
tors and colleagues proved that all 
life was really the same, that there 
was a definite, though long and in- 
volved, chain of relationships be- 
tween the ordinarily invisible ani- 
malcules under the microscope and 
the microscopist who looked at them. 

Now, if the same elements com- 
posed the stars and their presumed 
planets, and if all life on our planet 
is somehow interrelated, wasn’t it 
reasonable to assume that there was 
equally related life on those other 
worlds, too? Life that was related 
to our life not only in the sense that 
it consisted of the same elements and 
presumably of the same compounds 
with the same functions, but life 
actually related to our life? 

The evolutionists required only 
one or a few little pieces of life at 
the beginning of the career of the 
planet Earth. They thought that 
it had probably originated here on 
Earth, but the other thought, that it 
had arrived on Earth, was equally 

A collection of the meteoric stones 
of the Holbrook fall. Life experi- 
ments zt 'ere performed on some of 
the other specimens of this shower. 

EXTRATERRESTRIAL BACTERIA 



logical. It had arrived many a 
time, when the planet was still too 
hot, when the Earth had cooled suf- 
ficiently to sustain life and there was 
a chance that it might arrive again. 
It was worth anybody’s time to 
watch out for such an event. 

Of course, different people ex- 
pected different things. An astron- 
omer by the name of M. W. Meyer 
had very substantial hopes. If a 
planet like the Earth collided with 
another planet, he reasoned, it would 
probably explode like an overheated 
boiler. Life in the air and on the 
continents would perish instantane- 
ously, but life in the oceans had a 
chance. The oceans, thrown into 
space during the explosion, would 
form watery spheres which would 
freeze into huge chunks of ice, more 
or less quickly, according to their 
size. The fish and starfish and 
jellyfish in them would freeze, too, 
but it was known that some animals 
survived such a treatment. Thus 
they might travel on and on in 
space, until the ice chunks crashed 
on another planet, preferably in the 
ocean of another planet. There they 
would thaw and some of the frozen 
denizens of another planet might 
come back to life. 

We think all this a little crude, 
but it was eagerly seized upon at 
the time when Meyer first published 
his ideas. One writer suggested 
that the trilobites of the Cambrian 
period must be such arrivals since 
nothing is known that existed before 
them. Another one was even more 
daring, in his opinion all of Aus- 
tralia had come down from the sky 

AST— 115 



in one big crash. There was no 
other way, he claimed, in which one 
could account for things like the 
platypus and the marsupials. 

While Meyer wondered about 
slices of frozen ocean, his compatriot 
and contemporary, Richter, was 
more careful. Richter only wanted 
spores of bacteria from space, spores 
which are notoriously hard to kill, 
spores which could be hiding in the 
protection of the interior of meteor- 
ites. It was Richter’s speculation 
which finally resulted in Svante 
Arrhenius’ theory of “panspermy,” 
the theory which let the spores 
travel by themselves through space, 
pushed along by the pressure of the 
light from one of the many suns. 
Arrhenius was the first who mar- 
shaled figures and equations in sup- 
port of his theory, proving that 
spores of bacteria could not only 
survive in space, but that they also 
were of the proper size to be pushed 
around by the light waves. Fur- 
thermore, that the spores could live 
long enough for the trips they took. 

Arrhenius’ theory, after some 
forty years of life, still finds favor 
in the eyes of most of the experts 
concerned and bacteriologists have 
even pointed out a number of bac- 
teria with strange life habits — some 
can do without oxygen, some even 
dislike oxygen, some thrive in 
hydrogen-chlorine compounds that 
are poisonous to everything else — 
and a few have gone so far as to 
point at specific bacteria as possible 
recent immigrants. The tetanus 
bacillus is one of them, and Spiril- 

116 



lum rubrum another one. Of course, 
there is no proof either way, but 
the matter deserves to be kept in 
mind. 

'But meantime, before Arrhenius 
published his hypothesis, another 
scientist by the name of Hahn had 
retired into his study and behind his 
microscope to find alien life in mete- 
orites. He was not successful in 
finding actual alien life. But he did 
find — or so he thought — plenty of 
evidence of alien life. Some meteor- 
ites proved to be full of tiny “fos- 
sils,” some others seemed to consist 
completely of tiny shells and pieces 
of shells, much in the manner of a 
piece of chalk. Halm’s eye had no 
trouble distinguishing definite shapes 
and forms. There were parts that 
looked as if they were the com- 
pressed skeletons of fossil sponges; 
there were others that looked defi- 
nitely like coral growth. 

There exist among our terrestrial 
fossils slabs of Jurassic slate, formed 
at the sea bottom apparently not too 
far from the coast line, which are 
covered with the remains of so- 
called crinoids, a now completely 
extinct form of marine life. These 
“sea lilies,” as they have also been 
called, belong to the same group of 
marine creatures as the starfish, but 
they had enormously long flexible 
stems, composed of small, thick and 
round plates, superficially similar to 
the column of the vertebrae in higher 
animals. Those slate slabs I have 
in mind are covered with the round 
pieces that made up the stems of the 
sea lilies, a picture that is as difficult 
to describe as it is easy to remember 

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE FICTION 



once you see it. Hahn had seen 
those slabs, slabs that looked as if 
they were thickly strewn with stone 
coins, about as thick as their radius, 
and he was surprised and elated 
when some of his meteorites pre- 
sented the same picture. His draw- 
ings and photographs and notes 
mounted up, until they finally were 
published in the form of a big and 
expensive book, a masterpiece of 
careful printing. 

Meteorites, Hahn announced in 
this book, fail to harbor life, as life, 
but fortunately some of the stony 
meteorites that reach us were origi- 
nally part of fossil-bearing layers 
of whatever planet was shattered. 
And the fossils in those meteorites 
prove that the planet was teeming 
with life, marine life, to be precise. 
Marine life which greatly resembled 
the marine life of our Earth during 
the late Jurassic period. But the 
planet must have been different from 
the Earth in size, since all the fossils 
are exceedingly small. They are 
smaller than the corresponding 
forms on Earth, although even the 
corresponding terrestrial forms are 
small in size. 

It was all very wonderful — a trifle 
too wonderful for scientists of lesser 
enthusiasm and greater knowledge 
than Hahn. Of course, they did not 
doubt his descriptions or drawings, 
but they did not at all agree with 
his interpretations. 

Hahn had been misled by some- 
thing which had misled other natu- 
ralists before him and which still 



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EXTEA TERRESTRIAL BACTERIA 



117 



proves annoying to young students 
and to amateur collectors of fossils. 
I am speaking of so-called dendrites, 
pseudo fossils which are often of 
extraordinary beauty and which 
have the annoying habit of occurring 
practically side by side with real 
fossils. One of the most celebrated 
fossil beds in all Europe are the 
slate quarries of Solnhofen in 
Bavaria. The two Jurassic birds, 
Archaeopteryx and Archaeornis, 
have been found near Solnhofen, 
countless small sparrow-sized flying 
dinosaurs have been uncovered there 
and whole collections of the most 
beautiful and best-preserved fossils 
of crabs and shrimps. The supply 
of fossils from Solnhofen has been 
steady and almost reliable ever since 
Alois Senefelder invented lithog- 
raphy, because no other slate on 
Earth is so well suited for this print- 
ing process as Solnhofen slate, 
which served the inventor for his 
first experiments. Because of this 
commercial demand Solnhofen slate 
has been quarried in large amounts 
for many decades and because of 
the intended use each slab has been 
examined carefully. 

And among the early finds there 
was a large number of extraordinary 
fossils of ferns and mosses. They 
were usually small in size, an inch 
or two high, but they were perfectly 
preserved and they were simply 
beautiful, so beautiful that Venetian 
artisans used such slabs as the 
material for mosaics showing in- 
credible little landscapes and for- 
ests. 

Pictures of some specimens got 

118 



into articles and even books on 
mosses and fernlike vegetation — 
until, one day, a call for extensive 
relabeling was sounded in the 
scientific journals. Those wonder- 
ful extinct mosses and/or miniature 
ferns were no fossils at all. They 
were just strangely deposited min- 
erals, formed originally in fine 
cracks by compounds like magne- 
sium-ortho-silicate and magnesium- 
meta-silicate. They were just den- 
drites — it was awful. 

And Hahn’s meteoric fossils seem 
to have been mostly microscopic 
dendrites ; some even were simply 
shapes formed by the crystalline 
structure of some meteorites. There 
exists a special subclass of stone 
meteorites which has a pronounced 
tendency to form such crystalline 
figures, the chondrites, and it had 
been Hahn’s misfortune to go to 
work on chondrites. 

Hahn’s misfortune did not prove, 
of course, that there could be no 
fossils in meteorites, but the chance 
that such a meteorite might fall and 
be discovered is so remote as to be 
virtually zero. 

There remained the hope for bac- 
teria from space. 

According to Arrhenius we might 
get a spore or two every day, but, 
while he is probably right, there is 
at present absolutely no way of 
proving it. No matter how strange 
a newly discovered bacillus may act 
and look, nobody will ever be will- 
ing to stake his reputation on the 
claim that it is an extraterrestrial 
form. As a matter of fact it is 

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE FICTION 



much more probable that it is a 
terrestrial form which had only been 
overlooked so far. Or that it is a 
new mutant ; bacteria might mutate 
very frequently for all we know 
about them. Actually what we do 
know about them indicates that 
they do mutate easily. 

Bacteria arriving by themselves 
via light pressure will not furnish 
any proof — but it would be another 
story if one could isolate bacteria 
from the interior of a meteorite and 
we could be pretty certain if such 
bacteria represented hitherto un- 
known forms. Statistically the 
chance that a stony meteorite may 
contain bacteria is rather small, but 
it is not so small that a few sampling 
tests might not be made. With great 
good luck one of these tests might 
turn out successful. 

It was this type of reasoning 
which prompted Professor Lipman 
to go to work on a number of mete- 
orite samples, but before describing 
the work it may be worth while to 
point out that the spores of bacteria 
that do exist in the interior of a 
meteorite would in all probability 
survive the descent. Very small 
meteorites burn up in the atmos- 
phere, but those that are large 
enough to reach the surface are 
heated only superficially. Their in- 
terior remains cool, even cold; the 
spores — provided that there are 
spores inside — would not be killed 
by extravagant heating. Nor is the 
impact velocity of meteorites weigh- 
ing less than, say, forty pounds very 
high. The way the formulas for 

extraterrestrial bacteria 



air resistance work out, the terminal 
velocity of such a meteorite would 
be between eight hundred and eight 
hundred and fifty feet per second, 
closer to the eight-hundred mark, 
even. Spores could survive such a 
crash; spores are bacteria “seeds", 
and inordinately hard to kill. 

It all boiled down to the realiza- 
tion that the chance of living spores 
of bacteria in a meteorite was very 
very slim indeed, but that these 
spores, if they did exist at all, had a 
very good chance of reaching the 
ground alive. 

In preliminary experiments Lip- 
man used up some ten small meteor- 
ites for the purpose of evolving the 
proper technique of handling the 
meteorites. The main problem was 
a thorough sterilization of the mete- 
orite. Every meteorite has touched 
the ground at some time during its 
career and a thorough contamina- 
tion with terrestrial bacteria is, 
therefore, to be expected. An ounce 
of uncultivated sandy soil contains, 
on the average, three million bac- 
teria, while the figure for garden soil 
is a little over fifteen times that high. 
Of course, it would be easy to steri- 
lize a meteorite, but every really 
thorough method would sterilize it 
all the way through. 

After having worked out a tech- 
nique for sterilizing the surface, hut 
leaving the interior untouched, Lip- 
man went to work on six meteorites, 
belonging to five different falls. 
Some of these falls were so-called 
“showers” which enabled Roy to 
use other specimens from the same 

nu 



falls for his own experiments. Lip- 
man’s meteorites were: 

( 1 ) Modoc, fall of September 2, 
1905. 

(2) Holbrook, fall of July 19, 
1912. 

(3) Johnstown, fall of July 6, 
1924. 

(4) Johnstown, fall of July 6, 
1924. 

(5) Mocs, fall of February 3, 
1882. 

(6) Pultusk, fall of January 30, 
1868. 

Lipman obtained bacteria from 
each one of these meteorites. No. 6 
produced an irregular rod type, 
mixed with coccus forms. It was 
found to be of a type that requires 
neither organic carbon nor organic 
nitrogen but can build carbohy- 
drates and proteins out of carbon 
dioxide and inorganic salts. The 
other five meteorites yielded cocci 
and rod-shaped bacteria of very or- 
dinary behavior. Lipman himself 
wrote that “these bacteria are simi- 
lar to forms common on our earth 
and probably identical with some of 
our forms.” He failed to have them 
classified — at least he did not report 
it — which is somewhat strange. 

The whole thing was a bit too 
good to be true ; six positive findings 
in six cases was a little bit too 
much. In fact it looked like a mis- 
take of some kind. Bacteriologists 
began to suspect pretty quickly that 
these bacteria were simply terres- 
trial bacteria, especially since most 
of the meteorites had been in the 

120 



ground for quite some time until 
they were picked up and had since 
then been handled extensively and 
formed part of collections where the 
very thought of need for sterility 
never occurred to anyone. 

When Sharat Kumar Roy re- 
peated Lipman’s experiments he 
used four small meteorites, one each 
from the falls of Holbrook, Mocs, 
Pultusk and Forest City, tire latter 
being the only one from another 
locality than Lipman’s stones. 

The first job was sterilization of 
the surface. The report deserves 
to be quoted verbatim here, partly 
because of the interesting procedure, 
partly because it will give to the 
layman an idea of the difficulties of 
such work : 

The specimen was scrubbed with hot 
water and new antiseptic soap — a sterile 
brush was used — rinsed several times 
in sterile water, dried with sterile cotton, 
and immersed in superoxol. After four 
hours the meteorite was removed with 
sterile tongs, dipped in ninety-fivc-per- 
cent alcohol for a minute, flamed until 
the alcohol had burned away and for a 
few seconds more, then dropped into a 
six-inch targe-bore test tube containing 
sterile peptone soil extract It was in- 
cubated aerobically for twelve weeks at 
twenty-eight degrees centigrade, then an- 
aerobically for sixteen weeks at twenty- 
seven degrees centigrade. The medium 
remained perfectly clear to the end of 
this time. The specimen was then 
crushed inside a sterile chamber in a 
specially devised mortar which was pre- 
viously sterilized inside a metal container. 
The container itself had served as a sep- 
arate sterile chamber. The powder was 
then distributed with a thoroughly flamed 
sterile spoon into single tubes of the fol- 
lowing media : peptone soil extract, Na._,S 
peptone soil extract, and peptone coal cx- 

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 



tract. The tubes were incubated aerobi- 
cally for two weeks at twenty-eight de- 
grees centigrade and anaerobically for 
eight weeks at thirty-seven degrees centi- 
grade. 

A control plate was exposed by passing 
it through the atmosphere of the inoculat- 
ing chamber four times. 

The results of these carefully con- 
ducted experiments — the technique 
used was based on the technique 
evolved by Lipman, but with some 
additions and variations — was not 
very heartening. No growth de- 
veloped from uncrushed meteorites 
— but it was the crushing process 
which was most likely to bring con- 
tamination. The powder from the 
four crushed meteorites was suffi- 
cient in quantity to inoculate twelve 
test tubes containing growing media. 
Growths developed in three of these 
twelve tubes ; stained smears showed 
two types of microorganisms in 
these growths, a rod-shaped bacillus 
and a round coccus. They turned 
out to be Bacillus subtilis and Sta- 
phylococcus albas, two well-known 
types of bacteria. These came from 
the growths in the test tubes. 

But there were still the control 
plates exposed in the inoculating 
chamber. Two of the three plates 
also developed two distinct types of 
bacterial colonies. They were 
stained and found to be rods and 
cocci ; after the appropriate tests 
they were found to be Bacillus sub- 
tilis and Staphylococcus albas. 

“The logical conclusion, there- 
fore,” says Roy’s report, “is that 
growth found in the three tubes 
inoculated with meteorite powder 

THE 



was the result of contamination with 
Bacillus subtilis and Staphylococcus 
albas. It is needless to mention that 
the utmost precautions were taken 
to prevent contamination, but, 
nevertheless, it apparently occurred 
in three of the twelve test tubes.” 

It may be added here that the 
contamination may have occurred 
by seepage long before the specimen 
was selected for the experiment. 
Roy took one of the Forest City 
meteorites — they fell at Forest City. 
Winnebago County, Iowa, at 5:15 
p. m. on May 2, 1890 — and 

soaked it in water for twenty-four 
hours. The meteorite weighed, air 
dry, 46.32 grams; when saturated 
and rubbed dry it weighed 47.14 
grams, showing an absorption of .82 
gram or 1.77 percent. 

Here the problem rests. 

So far meteorites have not yielded 
any signs of extraterrestrial life. 
Twice somebody reported that he 
had found proof for such extrater- 
restrial life; in the first case the 
whole observation was a mistake 
and in the second case the announce- 
ment has to be put down as due to 
a case of bacterial contamination. 

But meteorites, as has been ex- 
plained before, can hardly be ex- 
pected to yield such proof; we had 
to turn to meteorites only because 
nothing else of extraterrestrial ori- 
gin is available on Earth, this date. 
That the result of the investigation 
was negative had to be expected. 
It has nothing at all to do with the 
probability of life on other worlds. 

END. 



EXTRATERRESTRIAL BACTERIA 



121 




Brass Tacks 



The Japs would think anyone zvho 
could raise a decent crop of 
whiskers zvas very hairy indeed. 

Dear Mr. Campbell: 

Boucher’s yarn, “One-Way 
Trip,” is a pretty good story, and 
I am not shooting at him or it. But 
he uses a type in it that gives me an 
excuse for sounding off on one of 
my pet phobias — popular misbeliefs 
that few ever question. Since he 
has taken Keats to task for the Cor- 
tez-Balboa confusion, 1 feel as jus- 
tified in picking up his own allusion 
to the hairy Ainu. Now don’t mis- 
understand me. Boucher did not 
stick his neck out an inch. He con- 
tented himself with introducing a 
character described that way — hairy 
— and let suggestion and tradition 
do the rest. It is not Boucher I 
quarrel with, but the tradition which 
he seems to have accepted, as have 
most of us. The hard fact is that 
the hairiness of the Ainu is in the 
same class with the tendency of the 
ostrich to stick his head in the sand 

122 



when in danger, or the proverbial 
infallibility of the elephantine mem- 
ory — a legend. It just ain’t so. 

The Ainu is hairy, even as you 
and I. That is, he can grow a re- 
spectable beard if he chooses. And 
he does. This led our dear foes, 
the Japanazi — who treat the poor 
Ainus abominably, incidentally — to 
attribute to them canine ancestry 
and start the myth that they were 
as hairy all over. This has been 
swallowed by everybody but the 
handful of anthropologists who have 
studied the queer race first-hand and 
know better. The truth of the mat- 
ter is that Ainus are no hairier than 
anyone else, barring the Mongoloid 
peoples that surround them, who 
have notoriously sparse whiskers, 
and that is attested to by scientists 
who have studied them. Perhaps 
the reason why the Nips fell into 
the error of believing that such 
abundantly bewhiskered men must 
be similarly hirsutely adorned all 
over grew out of the fact that Ainus 
live in a bitterly cold climate and 

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 




dress much after the fashion of the 
Eskimos, revealing nothing but the 
face and hands. They are also re- 
luctant to disrobe in the presence 
of curious strangers. 

Another factor in the Ainu hairi- 
ness myth doubtless grows out of 
the Ainu’s own superstition. They 
believe in sympathetic magic. In 
consequence they guard their locks 
carefully, never permitting a shave 
or haircut for fear an enemy will 
gain possession of a fragment of 
their hair. The result, since ethni- 
cally they resemble the Alpine stock 
of Europe, is something very similar 
to that achieved by our own devotees 
to the cult of the House of David. 
They do look hairy, what you can 
see of them, and there is no doubt 
about that. But — 

At any rate, anyone caring to 
challenge the forgoing remarks is 
invited to read Malvina Hoffman’s 
“Heads and Tales” (Scribners, 
1934), in which she debunks the 
myth. She, it may be recalled, was 
the sculptress who went all over the 
South Seas, Africa, the Orient and 
elsewhere making the anthropologi- 
cal bronze sculptures now displayed 
in the Hall of Man, at the Field Mu- 
seum in Chicago. She and her 
party photographed and modeled 
many Ainus of both sexes on their 
native island of Hokkaido, and 
ought to know what they’re like. 
She is in agreement with the scien- 
tists Doctors Montandon and Batch- 
elder, both of whom have lived 
among the Ainus and studied them, 
and found them to be not of Mon- 
goloid stock, but probably evolved 



from some primitive proto-Nordic 
race of the Paleo-Neolithic era, 
much resembling our' own kind. 
She says, “I found that the Ainus 
do not appeal- to be as hairy as the 
Todas of India, or in fact many 
Europeans,” and her book contains 
illustrations in the form of photo- 
graphs that bear her out. The al- 
leged hairiness, it seems needless to 
say, is restricted to men. The 
women have about the same hair 
traits as women everywhere. — Mal- 
colm Jameson. 



We’re working on the art end — • 
but artists do not, generally, take 
to science-fiction as a hobby. 
And that’s what , makes a real 
science-fiction artist. 

Dear Mr. Campbell: 

I’ve just finished the second in- 
stallment of “Gather Darkness,” 
and, while I remember about it, I 
want to say it’s one of your best yet. 
It has the same theme of a scientific- 
religious feudalism that has cropped 
up in one or two recent stories, but 
the idea has never been as fully ex- 
ploited before. And its a perfect 
example of the constant mutation 
that ASF has undergone continu- 
ally under the “Campbell Regime.” 
Two years ago, “Gather Darkness” 
would have gone automatically into 
Unknown. Nowadays the tales in 
Astounding are almost all of the 
“wacky” variety, with a maximum 
of miracles and a minimum of ex- 
planation. 

Another thing I like about 
Astounding. New names are con- 



BEASS TACKS 



123 



tinually coming in, and that isn't 
entirely due to the war, I fancy. 
Gone are the days when the aver- 
age science-fiction mag was con- 
tinually written by a score or so of 
well-known names. You have to 
have something more than a name 
to keep appearing in ASF. 

Nevertheless, 1 have got some- 
thing to complain about, and that 
is the pictorial work. Timmins is 
better in front than I thought he’d 
be; his best so far being the one 
for “Swimming Lessons,” but the 
inside work could be a lot better. 
Orban is the only artist I really 
like; Kramer’s originality seems to 
be running dry, while Fax doesn’t 
seem ever to have had any. Your 
new chap, Williams, is indistin- 
guishable from Kolliker, but might 
come to something. ' I forgot to 
mention the lsips. Their slick, 
streamlined style is a joy to the 
eye. 

While I’m writing, I might as 
well add that, although I missed 
the first installment of “The 
Weapon Makers,” I enjoyed it very 
much. — Robert J. Silbuni, The 
Dingle, Rhydyfelin, Aberystwyth, 
Wales, Britain. 



Well, the Army Medical Corps has 
Padgett's services, and Leiber is 
doing math for one of the air- 
craft plants ttenv. DAS rvas my 
pen name. 

Dear Mr. Campbell : 

The August issue of Astounding 
is back to its old level, after a few 
months of not so good. I know 



that some of the letdown is due to 
the absence of Heinlein and others, 
but if. you can keep Padgett, Leiber 
and Boucher after the others get 
back — wow. 

Before I- go into the stories, let 
me congratulate you on returning 
to the small size. I hope that, even 
when Natzo, Japso, and Fatso are 
squelched, that you will retain the 
small size. 

Now as to stories: 

1. “Endowment Policy.” Pad- 
gett handled an old theme with a 
skill and approach I liked. 

2. “M33 in Andromeda.” Mor- 
ton and the others back again and 
much better than “Recruiting Sta- 
tion” and "Asylum.” 

3. “Judgment Night.” Miss 
Moore handles the theme in a ca- 
pable manner. 

4. ’“When Is When.” Jameson, 
not at his best is a little off on his 
time traveling — no matter how they 
figured it, it would be a span af- 
fair. Adequate, however. When 
is Commander Bullard returning? 

5. “The Mutant’s Brother.” 

6. “One-way Trip” — much more 
could have been done with this 
idea. 

This is not to say that any of the 
stories are bad, but just that some 
are better than others. 

I caught a note in the last Brass 
Tacks that fascinated me. Is the 
John W. Campbell and Don A. Stu- 
art of “Who Goes There” one and 
the same individual? — Robert B. 
Griffin, 279 Washington Avenue 61, 
Brooklyn, 5, New York. 



124 



ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 




We Print the Truth 



by Anthony Boucher 

WARJVIiVG — Pure Fantasy. This is a tale of pure fantasy, run as 
an experiment. If you don’t like an occasional fantasy, the experi- 
ment ends right here. But this is a story of a newspaper that 
always printed the truth — for anything it printed became truth! 

Illustrated by Orban 



“All right then, tell me this: I£ 
God can do anything — ” Jake 

Willis cleared his throat and paused, 
preparatory to delivering the real 
clincher. 



The old man with the scraggly 
beard snorted and took another shot 
of applejack. “ — can He make a 
weight so heavy He can’t lift it? 
We know that one, Jake, and it’s 



WE PIIINT THE TttDTH 



125 




nonsense. It’s like who wakes the 
bugler, or who shaves the barber, 
or how many angels can dance how 
many sarabands on the point of a 
pin. It’s just playing games. It 
takes a village atheist to heat a 
scholastic disputant at pure verbal 
hogwash. Have a drink.” 

Jake Willis glared. “I’d sooner 
be the village atheist,” he said flatly, 
"than the town drunkard. You 
know I don’t drink.” He cast a 
further sidewise glare at the little 
glass in Father Byrne’s hand, as 
though the priest were only a step 
from the post of town drunkard 
himself. 

“You're an ascetic without mysti- 
cism, Jake, and there’s no excuse 
for it. Better be like me : a mystic 
without ary a trace of asceticism. 

More fun.” 

“Stop heckling him, Luke,” 
Father Byrne put in quietly. “Let’s 
hear what if God can do anything.” 

Lucretius Sellers grunted and be- 
came silent. MacVeagh said, "Go 
ahead, Jake,” and Chief Hanby 
nodded. 

They don’t have a cracker barrel 
in Grover, but they still have a hot- 
stove league. It meets pretty regu- 
larly in the back room of the Sen- 
tinel. Oh, once in a while some 
place else. On a dull night in the 
police station they may begin to 
flock around Chief Hanby or maybe 
even sometimes they get together 
with Father Byrne at the parish 
house. But mostly it’s at the Sen- 
tinel. 

There’s lots of spare time around 

120 



a weekly paper, even with the in- 
crease in job printing that’s come 
front all the forms and stuff they 
use out at the Hitchcock plant. And 
Editor John MacVeagh likes to 
talk, so it’s natural to gather around 
him all the others that like to talk, 
too. It started when Luke Sellers 
was a printer before he resigned 
to take up drinking as a career. 

The talk’s apt to be about any- 
thing. Father Byrne talks music 
mostly; it’s safer than his own job. 
With John MacVeagh and Chief 
Hanby it’s shop talk — news and 
crime, not that there’s much of 
either in Grover, or wasn’t up to 
this evening you’re reading about. 

But sometime in the evening it’s 
sure to get around to: Is there a 
God ? And if so why doesn’t He — 
Especially when Jake Willis is there. 
Jake’s the undertaker and the coro- 
ner. He says, or used to say then, 
that when he’s through with them, 
he knows they’re going to stay dead, 
and that’s enough for him. 

So here Jake had built up to his 
usual poser again. Only this time 
it wasn't the weight that Omnipo- 
tence couldn’t lift. Everybody was 
pretty tired of that. It was, “If 
God can do anything, why doesn’t 
he stop the war?” 

“For once, Jake, you’ve got some- 
thing,” said John MacVeagh. “I 
know the problem of Evil is the 
great old insoluble problem ; but 
Evil on a scale like this begins to 
get you. Front an Old Testament 
God, maybe yes; hut it’s hard to 
believe in the Christian God of love 
and kindness permitting all this mass 

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 



slaughter and devastation and 
cruelty.” 

“We just don’t know,” Cliief 
Hanby said slowly. “We don’t un- 
derstand. ‘For my thoughts are not 
your thoughts, neither are your 
ways my ways, saith the Lord. For 
as the Heavens are higher than the 
earth, so are my ways higher than 
your ways, and my thoughts than 
your thoughts.’ Isaiah, fifty-five, 
eight and nine. We just don’t un- 
derstand.” 

“Uh-huh, chief.” MacVeagh shook 
his head. “That won’t wash. That’s 
the easy way out. The one thing 
we’ve got to know and understand 
about God is that He loves good 
and despises evil, which I’ll bet 
there’s a text for only I wouldn’t 
know.” 

“He loves truth,” said Chief 
Hanby. “We don't know if His 
truth is our ‘good.’ ” 

Lucretius Sellers refilled his glass. 
“If the Romans thought there was 
truth in wine, they should’ve known 
about applejack. But what do you 
say, Father?" 

Father Byrne sipped and smiled. 
“It’s presumptuous to try to unravel 
the divine motives. Isaiah and the 
chief are right: His thoughts are 
not our thoughts. But still I think 
we can understand the answer to 
Jake’s question. If you were God — ” 

They never heard the end to this 
daring assumption, not that night, 
anyway. For just then was when 
Philip Rogers burst in. I-Ie was al- 
ways a little on the pale side — thin, 
too, only the word the girls used for 



it was “slim," and they liked the 
pallor, too. Thought it made him 
look “interesting,” with those clean 
sharp features and those long dark 
eyelashes. Even Laura Hitchcock 
liked the features and the lashes and 
the pallor. Ever since she read 
about Byron in high school. 

But the girls never saw him look- 
ing as pale as this, and they wouldn’t 
have liked it. Laura now might 
have screamed at the sight of him. 
It isn’t right, it isn’t natural for the 
human skin to get that pale, as 
though a patriotic vampire had lifted 
your whole stock of blood for the 
plasma drive. 

He fumbled around with noises 
for almost a minute before he found 
words. The men were silent. Ab- 
stract problems of evil didn’t seem 
so important when you had con- 
crete evidence of some kind of evil 
right here before you. Only evil 
could drain blood like that. 

Finally one of his choking glurks 
sounded like a word. The word was 
“Chief!” 

Chief Hanbv got up. “Yes, Phil? 
What’s the matter?” 

Wordlessly Luke Sellers handed 
over the bottle of applejack. It was 
a pretty noble gesture. There was 
only about two drinks left, and Phil 
Rogers took them both in one swal- 
low. 

“I thought you’d be over here, 
chief.” he managed to say. “You’ve 
got to come. Quick. Out to Aunt 
Agnes’.” 

“What the matter out there? 
Burglary? “Chief Hanby asked with 
an optimism he didn’t feel. 



WE PRINT THE TRUTH 



127 



“Maybe. I don’t know. I didn’t 
look. I couldn’t. All that blood — 
Look. Even on my trousers where 
J bent down — I don’t know why. 
Any fool could see she was dead — ” 
“Your aunt?” Chief Hanby 
gasped. Then the men were silent. 
They kept their eyes away from the 
young man with blood on his trou- 
sers and none in his face. Father 
Byrne said something softly to him- 
self and to his God. It was a good 
thirty seconds before the profes- 
sional aspects of this news began to 
strike them. 

“You mean murder?” Chief 
Hanby demanded. Nothing like this 
had ever happened in Grover before. 
Murder of H. A. Hitchcock’s own 
sister! “Come on, boy. We won't 
waste any time.” 

John MacVeagh’s eyes were 
alight. “No objections to the press 
on your heels, chief? I’ll be with 
you as soon as I see Whalen.” 
Hanby nodded. “Meet you there, 
Johnny,” 

Father Byrne said, “I know your 
aunt never quite approved of me 
or my church, Philip. But perhaps 
she won’t mind too much if I say a 
mass for her in the morning.” 

Jake Willis said nothing, but his 
eyes gleamed with interest. It was 
hard to tell whether the coroner or 
the undertaker in him was more 
stirred by the prospect. 

Lucretius Sellers headed for the 
door. “As the only man here with- 
out a professional interest in death, 
I bid you boys a good night.” He 
laid his hand on the pale young 

12ft 



man’s arm and squeezed gently. 
“Sorry, Phil.” 

Father Byrne was. the last to 
leave, and Molly bumped into him 
in the doorway. She returned his 
greeting hastily and turned to John 
MacVeagh, every inch of her plump 
body trembling with excitement. 
“What’s happening, boss? What 
goes? It must be something ter- 
rific to break up the bull session 
this early.” 

MacVeagh was puffing his pipe 
faster and hotter than was good for 
it. "I’ll say something’s happened, 
Molly. Agnes Rogers has been 
killed. Murdered.” 

“Wheel” Molly yelled. “Stop 
the presses ! Is that a story ! Is 
that a — Only you can’t stop the 
presses when we don’t come out 
till Friday, can you?” 

‘Tve got to talk to Whalen a 
minute — and about that very thing 
— and then I’ll be off hotfooting it 
after the chief. It’s the first local 
news in three years that’s rated an 
extra, and it’s going to get one.” 
"Wonderful !” Her voice changed 
sharply. “The poor crazy old 
woman — We’re vultures, that’s 
what we are — ” 

“Don’t he melodramatically moral, 
Molly. It’s our job. There have 
to be . . . well, vultures ; and that’s 
us. Now let me talk to Whalen, 
and I'll—” 

“Boss?” 

“Uh-huh ?” 

“Boss, I’ve been a good girl Fri- 
day, haven’t I? I keep all the job 
orders straight and I never make 
a mistake about who’s just been to 

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 



the city and who's got relatives 
staying with them and whose straw- 
berry jam won the prize at the 
Fair—" 

“Sure, sure. But look, Molly — ” 
“And when you had that hang- 
over last Thursday and I fed you 
tomato juice all morning and beer 
all afternoon and we got the paper 
out O. K., you said you’d do any- 
thing for me, didn’t you?" 

“Sure. But — ” 

“All right. Then you stay here 
and let me cover this murder.” 
“That’s absurd. It’s my job to — ” 
“If you knew how much I want 
to turn out some copy that isn’t 
about visiting and strawberry jam — 
And besides, this’ll be all tied up 
with the Hitchcocks. Maybe even 
Laura’ll be there. And when you’re 
. . . well, involved a little with peo- 
ple, how can you be a good re- 
porter? Me, I don’t give a damn 
about Hitchcocks. But with you, 
maybe you’d be in a spot where 
you’d have to be either a lousy re- 
porter or a lousy friend.” 

MacVeagh grinned. “As usual. 
Friday, you make sense. Go on. 
Get out there and bring me back 
the best story the Sentinel ever 
printed. Go ahead. Git.” 

“Gee, boss — ” Molly groped for 
words, but all she found was an- 
other and even more heartfelt 
“Gee — ” Then she was gone. 

MacVeagh smiled to himself. 
Swell person, Molly. He’d be lost 
without her. Grand wife for some 
man, if he liked them a little on the 
plump side. If, for instance, he had 



never seen the superb slim body of 
Laura Hitchcock — 

But thoughts of Laura now would 
only get in the way. He’d have to 
see her tomorrow. Offer his con- 
dolences on the death of her aunt. 
Perhaps in comforting her dis- 
tress — 

Though it would be difficult, and 
even unconvincing to display too 
much grief at Agnes Rogers’ death. 
She had been Grover’s great ec- 
centric, a figure of fun, liked well 
enough, in a disrespectful way, but 
hardly loved. A wealthy widow- — 
she held an interest in the Hitch- 
cock plant second only to H. A.’s 
own — she had let her fortune take 
care of itself — and of her — while 
she indulged in a frantic crackpot 
quest for the Ultimate Religious 
Truth. At least once a year she 
would proclaim that she had found 
it, and her house would be filled 
with the long-robed disciples of the 
Church of the Eleven Apostles — 
which claimed that the election by 
lot of Matthias had been fraudulent 
and invalidated the apostolic suc- 
cession of all other churches — or 
the sharp-eyed, businesslike emis- 
saries of Christoid Thought — which 
seemed to preach the Gospel accord- 
ing to St. Dale. 

It was hard to take Agnes 
Rogers’ death too serious. But that 
ultimate seriousness transfigures, at 
least for the moment, the most 
ludicrous of individuals. 

Whalen was reading when John 
MacVeagh entered his cubbyhole 
off the printing room. One of 



WE PRINT THE TRUTH 



129 



those books that no one, not even 
Father Byrne, had ever recognized 
the letters of. It made MacVeagh 
realize again how little he knew of 
this last survival of the race of tramp 
printers, who came out of nowhere 
to do good work and vanish back 
into nowhere. 

Brownies, he thought. With whis- 
key in their saucers instead of milk. 

Not that Whalen looked like any 
brownie. He was taller than Mac- 
Veagh himself, and thinner than 
Phil Rogers. The funniest thing 
about him was that when you called 
up a memory image of him, you saw 
him with a beard. He didn’t have 
any, but there was something about 
the thin long nose, the bright deep- 
set eyes — Anyway, you saw a 
beard. 

You could almost see it now, in 
the half light outside the circle that 
shone on the unknown alphabet. He 
looked up as MacVeagh came in and 
said, “John. Good. I wanted to 
see you.” 

MacVeagh had never had a 
printer before who called him by 
his formal first name. A few had 
ventured on Johnny, Luke Sellers 
among them, but never John. And 
still whatever came from Whalen 
sounded right. 

“We’ve got work to do, Whalen. 
We’re going to bring out an extra 
tomorrow. This town’s gone and 
busted loose with the best story in 
years, and it’s up to us to — ” 

“I’m sorry, John,” Whalen said 
gravely. His voice was the deep- 
est MacVeagh had ever heard in 

130 



ordinary speech. “I’m leaving to- 
night.” 

“Leaving — ” MacVeagh was al- 
most speechless. Granted that 
tramp printers were unpredictable, 
still after an announcement such 
as he’d just made— 

“I must, John. No man is master 
of his own movements. I must go, 
and tonight. That is why I wished 
to see you. I want to know your 
wish.” 

“My wish? But look, Whalen: 
We’ve got work to do. We’ve got 
to 1 -” 

“I must go.” It was said so 
simply and sincerely that it stood 
as absolute fact, as irrevocable as 
it was incomprehensible. “You’ve 
been a good employer, John. Good 
employers have a wish when I go. 
I'll give you time to think about 
it; never make wishes hastily.” 
"But I — Look, Whalen. I’ve 
never seen you drink, but I’ve never 
known a printer that didn’t. You’re 
babbling. Sleep it off, and in the 
morning we’ll talk about leaving.” 
“You never did get my name 
straight, John,” Whalen wart on. 
“It was understandable in all that 
confusion the day you hired me 
after Luke Sellers had retired. But 
Whalen is only my first name. I’m 
really Whalen Smith. And it isn’t 
quite Whalen — ” 

“What difference does that 
make ?” 

“You still don’t understand? You 
don’t see how some of us had to 
take up other trades with the times ? 
When horses went and you still 
wanted to work with metal, as an 

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 



individual worker and not an ant 
on an assembly line — So you don’t 
believe I can grant your wish, 
John ?” 

"Of course not. Wishes — ” 

“Look at the book, John.” 

MacVeagh looked. He read: 

At this point in the debate his majesty 
waxed exceeding wroth and smote the 
great oaken table with a mighty oath. 
"Nay," he swore, “all of our powers they 
shall not take from us. We will sign 
tbe compact, but we will not relinquish 
all. For unto us and our loyal servitors 
must remain — ” 

"So what?” he said. "Fairy 
tales ?” 

Whalen Smith smiled. "Exactly. 
The annals of the court of His 
Majesty King Oberon.” 

"Which proves what?” 

"You read it, didn’t you? I gave 
you the eyes to read — ” 

John MacVeagh looked back at 
the book. He had no great oaken 
table to smite, but he swore a mighty 
oath. For the characters were again 
strange and illegible. 

"I can grant your wish, John,” 
said Whalen Smith with quiet as- 
surance. 

The front doorbell jangled. 

“I’ll think about it,” said Mac- 
Veagh confusedly. “I’ll let you 
know — ” 

"Before midnight, John. I must 
be gone then,” said the printer. 

Even an outsider to Grover would 
have guessed that the man waiting 
in the office was H. A. Hitchcock. 
He was obviously a man of na- 
tional importance, from the polished 



tips of his shoes to the equally pol- 
ished top of his head. He was well- 
preserved and as proud of his figure 
as he was of his daughter’s or his 
accountant’s ; but he somehow' 
bulked as large as though he weighed 
tw'o hundred. 

The top of his head was gleaming 
with unusual luster at the moment, 
and his cheeks were red. “Sit 
down, MacVeigh,” he said, as au- 
thoritatively as though this was his 
own office. 

John MacVeagh sat down, said, 
"Yes, Mr. Hitchcock?” and waited. 

“Terrible thing,” Mr. Hitchcock 
sputtered. "Terrible. Poor Agnes — 
Some passing tramp, no doubt.” 

“Probably,” John agreed. In- 
habitants of Grover were hard to 
picture as murderers. “Anything 
taken ?” 

“Jewelry from the dressing table. 
Loose cash. Didn’t find the wall 
safe, fortunately. Chief Hanby’s 
quite satisfied. Must have been 
a tramp. Sent out a warning to 
State highway police.” 

"That was wise.” He wondered 
why H. A. Hitchcock had bothered 
to come here just for this. Molly 
would bring it to him shortly. He 
felt a minor twinge of regret — pass- 
ing tramps aren’t good copy, even 
when their victim is a magnate’s 
sister. 

“Hanby’s satisfied,” Mr. Hitch- 
cock went on. “You understand 
that?”. 

“Of course.” 

“So I don’t want you or your 
girl reporter questioning him and 



WE PRINT THIS TRUTH 



131 



stirring up a lot of confusion. No 
point to it.” 

“If the chief’s satisfied, we aren’t 
apt to shake him.” 

“And I don’t want any hugger- 
mugger. I know you newspaper- 
men. Anything for a story. Look 
at the way the press associations 
treated that strike. What hap- 
pened? Nothing. Just a little 
necessary discipline. And you’d 
think it was a massacre. So I want 
a soft pedal on poor Agnes’ death. 
You understand? Just a few para- 
graphs — mysterious marauder — you 
know.” 

“It looks,” said MacVeagh rue- 
fully, “as though that was all it was 
going to he worth.” 

“No use mentioning that Philip 
and Laura were in the house. Mat- 
ter of fact, so was I. We didn’t see 
anything. She’d gone upstairs. No 
point to our evidence. Leave us 
out of it." 

MacVeagh looked up with fresh 
interest. “All of you there? All 
of you downstairs and a passing 
tramp invades the upstairs and gets 
away with — ” 

“Damn clever, some of these 
criminals. Know the ropes. If I’d 
laid my hands on the — Well, that 
won’t bring Agnes back to life. 
Neither will a scare story. Had 
enough unfavorable publicity lately. 
So keeprit quiet. Don’t trust that 
reporter of yours ; don’t know what 
wild yarns she might bring back to 
you. Thought I’d get it all straight 
for you.” 

“Uh-huh.” MacVeagh nodded 
abstractedly. “You were all to- 

132 



gether downstairs, you and Laura 
and Philip?” 

“Yes,” said Mr. Hitchcock. He 
didn’t hesitate, but MacVeagh 
sensed a lie. 

“Hm-m-m,” was all he said. 

“Don’t you believe me? Ask 
Laura. Ask Philip.” 

“I intend to,” said John Mac- 
Veagh quietly. 

Mr. Hitchcock opened his mouth 
and stared. “There’s no need for 
that, young man. No need at all. 
Any necessary facts you can get 
from me. I’d sooner you didn’t 
bother my daughter or my nephew 
or the chief. They have enough 
troubles.” 

MacVeagh rose from behind his 
desk. “There's been a murder,” he 
said slowly. “The people of Grover 
want to know the truth. Wherever 
there’s an attempt to cover up, you 
can be pretty sure that there’s some- 
thing to cover. Whatever it is, the 
Sentinel’s going to print it. Good 
night, Mr. Hitchcock.” 

With the full realization of what 
MacVeagh meant. Mr. Hitchcock 
stopped spluttering. There was 
nothing of the turkey cock about 
him now. He was quiet and deadly 
as he said, “I’ll talk to Mr. Manson 
tomorrow.” 

“Sorry to disappoint you. My 
debt to Manson’s bank was paid off 
last month. We haven't been do- 
ing badly since the influx of your 
workers doubled our circulation.” 

“And I think that our plant’s 
printing will be more efficiently and 
economically handled in the city.” 

“As you wish. We can make out 

ASTOUNDING SC I ENC'E-FICTI ON 



without it.” He hoped he sounded 
more convincing than he felt, 

“And you understand that my 
daughter will hardly be interested 
in seeing you after this?” 

“I understand. You under- 
stand, too, that her refusal to see 
the press might easily be miscon- 
strued under the circumstances?” 

Mr. Hitchcock said nothing. He 
did not even glare. He turned and 
walked out of the room, closing the 
door gently. His quiet exit was 
more effectively threatening than 
any blustering and slamming could 
have been. 

MacVeagh stood by the desk a 
moment and thought about Rubi- 
cons and stuff. His eyes were hard 
and his lips firmly set when he 
looked up as Whalen entered. 

"It’s almost midnight,” the old 
printer said. 

MacVeagh grabbed the phone. 
“Two three two,” he said. “You’re 
still bound to walk out on me, 
Whalen?” 

"Needs must, John.” 

“O. K. I can make out without 
you. I can make out without H. A. 
Hitchcock and his — Hello. Mrs. 
Belden ? , . . MacVeagh speaking. 
Look, I’m sorry to wake you up at 
this hour, but could you go up and 
get Luke Sellers out of bed and tell 
him I want him over here right 
away ? It’s important. . . . Thanks.” 
He hung up. “Between us Molly 
and I can whip Luke back into some 
sort of shape as a printer. We'll 
make out.” 

“Good, John. I should be sorry 



to inconvenience you. And have 
you thought of your wish ?” 

MacVeagh grinned. “I’ve had 
more important things on my mind, 
Whalen. Go run along now. I’m 
sorry to lose you ; you know that. 
And I wish you luck, whatever it is 
you’re up to. Good-by.” 

"Please, John.” The old man’s 
deep voice was earnest. “I do not 
wish you to lose what is rightfully 
yours. What is your wish? If you 
need money, if you need love — ” 
MacVeagh thumped his desk. 
“I’ve got a wish all right. And it's 
not love nor money. I’ve got a 
paper, and I’ve got a debt to that 
paper and its readers. What hap- 
pened tonight’ll happen again. It’s 
bound to. And sometime I may not 
have the strength to fight it, God 
help me. So I’ve got a wish.” 
"Yes, John?” 

"Did yon ever look at our mast- 
head ? Sometimes you can see things 
so often that you never really see 
them. But look at that masthead. 
It’s got a slogan on it, under where 
it says ‘ Grover Sentinel Old Jona- 
than Minter put that slogan there, 
and that slogan was the first words 
he ever spoke to me when he took 
me on here. He was a great old 
man, and I’ve got a debt to him, 
too, and to his slogan. 

“Do you know what a slogan 
really means? It doesn’t mean a 
come-on, a bait. It doesn’t mean 
Eat Wootsy-Tootsie and Watch 
Your Hair Curl. It means a rally- 
ing call, a battle cry.” 

“I know, John.” 

"And that’s what this slogan is. 



WE PRINT THE TRUTH 



133 




the Sentinel's battle cry : We print 
the truth. So this is my wish, and 
if anybody had a stack of Bibles 
handy I’d swear to it on them: 
May the Sentinel never depart from 
that slogan. May that slogan itself 
be true, in the fullest meaning of 
truth. May there never be lies or 
suppression or evasions in the Sen- 
tinel because always and forever we 
print the truth.” 

It was impossible to see what 
Whalen Smith did with his hands. 
They moved too nimbly. For a 
moment it seemed as though then- 
intricate pattern remained glowing 
in the air. Then it was gone, and 
Whalen said, “I have never granted 

134 



a nobler wish. Nor,” he added, "a 
more dangerous one.” 

He was gone before MacVeagh 
could ask what he meant. 

II. 

Wednesday’s extra of the Grover 
Sentinel carried the full uncensored 
story of the murder of Agnes Rog- 
ers, and a fine job Molly had done 
of it. It carried some filling matter, 
too, of course, much of it mats from 
the syndicate, eked out with local 
items from the spindles, like the 
announcement of Old Man Herki- 
mer's funeral and the secretary’s 
report of the meeting of the Ladies’ 

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 



Aid at Mrs. Warren’s. 

There was no way of telling that 
one of those local items was in- 
finitely more important to the future 
of John MacVeagh and of Grover 
itself than the front-page story. 

MacVeagh woke up around two 
on Wednesday afternoon. They’d 
worked all night on the extra, he 
and Molly and Luke. He’d never 
thought at the time tonvonder where 
the coffee'came from that kept them 
going ; he realized now it must have 
been Molly who supplied it. 

But they’d got out the extra ; 
that was the main thing. Sensa- 
tionalism? Vultures, as Molly had 
said ? Maybe he might have thought 
so before H. A. Hitchcock's visit. 
Maybe another approach, along 
hose lines, might have gained Hitch- 
cock's end. But he knew, as well 
as any man can ever ‘know his own 
motives, that the driving force that 
carried them through last night’s 
frantic activity was no lust for sen- 
sationalism. no greed for sales, but 
a clean, intense desire to print the 
truth for Grover. 

The fight wasn’t over. T.he extra 
was only the start. Tomorrow he 
would be preparing Friday’s regular 
issue, and in that — 

The first stop, he decided, was 
the station. It might be possible to 
get something out of Chief Hanby. 
Though he doubted if the chief was 
clear enough of debt to Manson’s 
bank, to say nothing of political 
obligations, to take a very firm stand 
against H. A. Hitchcock. 

MacVeagh met her in the ante- 
room of the station. She was com- 



ing out of the chief’s private office, 
and Phil Rogers was with her. He 
had just his normal pallor now, and 
looked almost human. Still not 
human enough, though, to justify 
the smile she was giving him and 
the way her hand rested on his arm. 

That smile lit up the dark, dusty 
little office. It hardly mattered that 
she wasn’t smiling at MacVeagh. 
Her smile was beauty itself, in the 
absolute, no matter who was it 
aimed at. Her every movement was 
beauty, and her clothes were a part 
of her, so that they and her lithe 
flesh made one smooth loveliness. 

And this was H. A. Hitchcock's 
daughter Laura, and MacVeagh was 
more tongue-tied than he usually 
was in her presence. He never 
could approach her without feeling 
like a high-school junior trying to 
get up nerve to date the belle of the 
class. 

“Laura — ” he said. 

She had a copy of the extra in 
one hand. Her fingers twitched it 
as she said, “I don’t think there is 
anything we could possibly say to 
each other, Mr. MacVeagh.” 

Philip Rogers was obviously re- 
pressing a snicker. MacVeagh 
turned to him. "I’m glad to see 
you looking better, Phil. I was 
worried about you last night. Tell 
me: how did you happen to find the 
body ?” 

Laura jerked at Philip’s arm. 
“Come on, Phil. Don’t be afraid of 
the big, bad editor.” 

Philip smiled, in the style that 
best suited his pallid profile. "Quite 
a journalistic achievement, this ex- 



WE PRINT THE TRUTH 



135 



tra, johnny. More credit to your 
spirit than to your judgment, but 
quite an achievement. Of course, 
you were far too carried away by 
it all to do any proofreading?” 
‘‘Come on, Phil.” 

“Hold it, Laura. I can’t resist 
showing our fearless young journal- 
ist his triumph of accuracy. Look, 
Johnny.” He took the paper from 
her and pointed to an inside page. 
“Your account of Old Man Herki- 
mer’s funeral : ‘Today under the 

old oaks of Mountain View Ceme- 
tery, the last' rites of Josephus R. 
Herkimer, 17, of this city — ’ ” He 
laughed. “The old boy ought to 
enjoy that posthumous youth." 

“Seventeen, seventy-seven!” Mac- 
Veagh snorted. “If that’s all that’s 
gone wrong in that edition. I’m a 
miracle man. But, Laura — ” 
“You’re quite right, Mr. Mac- 
Vcagh. There are far worse things 
wrong with that edition than the 
misprint which amuses Philip.” 
“Will you be home tonight?” he 
said with harsh abruptness. 

“For you, Mr. MacVeagh, I shall 
never be home. Good day.” 

Philip followed her. He looked 
over his shoulder once and grinned, 
never knowing how close his pallid 
profile came to being smashed for- 
ever. 

Chief Hanby was frowning miser- 
ably as MacVeagh came into the 
office. The delicate smoke of his 
cigar indicated one far above his 
usual standard — it was easy to 
guess its source — but he wasn’t en- 
joying it. . 

13S 



“ ‘Render therefore unto Cae- 
sar,’ ” he said, “ ‘the things which 
are Caesar's ; and unto God the 
things that are God’s.’ Matthew, 
twenty-two, twenty-one. Only who 
knows which is which?” 

“Troubles, chief?” MacVeagh 
asked. 

Chief Hanby had a copy of the 
extra on his desk. His hand touched 
it almost reverently as he spoke. 
“He went to see you, John?” 
“Yeah.” 

“And still you printed this? 
You’re a brave man, John, a brave 
man.” 

“You're no coward yourself, 
chief. Remember when Nose 
O'Leary escaped from the State pen 
and decided Grover’d make a nice 
hide-out?” 

The chief's eyes glowed with the 
memory of that past exploit. “But 
that was different, John. A man 
can maybe risk his life when he 
can’t risk — I’ll tell you this much. 
I’m not talking to you. not right 
now. Nothing’s settled, nothing’s 
ripe, I don’t know a thing. But I’m 
still groping. And I’m not going to 
stop groping. And if I grope out 
an answer to anything — whatever 
the answer is, you’ll get it.” 

MacVeagh thrust out his hand. 
“I couldn’t ask fairer than that, 
chief. We both want the truth, and 
between us we’ll get it.” 

Chief Hanby looked relieved. “I 
wouldn't blame H. A. too much, 
John. Remember he’s under a 
strain. These labor troubles are 
getting him, and with the election 
coming up at the plant — ” 

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE FICTION 



“And whose fault are the trou- 
bles? Father Byrne’s committee 
suggested a compromise and a labor- 
management plan. The men were 
willing enough — ” 

“Even they aren't any more. Not 
since Bricker took over. We’ve all 
got our troubles. Take Jake Willis 
now — Why, speak of the devil 1” 
The coroner looked as though he 
could easily take a prize for worried 
expressions away from even Mac- 
Veagli and the chief. The greeting 
didn’t help it ! He said, “There’s 
too much loose talk about devils. 
It’s as barbarous as swearing by 
God.’’ But his heart wasn’t in his 
conventional protest. 

“What is the matter, Jake?” the 
chief asked. “You aren’t worried 
just on account of you’ve got an 
inquest coming up, are you?” 
“No, it ain't that — ” His eyes 
rested distrustfully on MacVeagh. 

“Off the record,” said the editor. 
“You’ve my word.” 

“All right, only — No. It ain’t 
no use. You wouldn’t believe me if 
I told you — Either of you going 
back past my establishment?” 

The chief was tied to his office. 
But John MacVeagh went along, 
his curiosity stimulated. His ques- 
tions received no answers. Jake 
Willis simply plodded along South 
Street, like a man ridden by the 
devils in which he refused to be- 
lieve. 

And what. MacVeagh thought to 
himself, would Jake think of a tramp 
printer who claimed to grant 
wishes? For the matter of that, 
what do I think — But there was 



too much else going on to spare 
much thought for Whalen Smith. 

Jake Willis led the way past his 
assistant without a nod, on back 
into the chapel. There was a casket 
in place there, duly embanked with 
floral tributes. The folding chairs 
were set up, there was a Bible on 
the lectern and music on the organ. 
The stage was completely set for a 
funeral, and MacVeagh remembered 
about Old Man Herkimer. 

“They’re due here at three thirty,” 
Jake whined. “And how’ll I dare 
show it to ’em? 1 don’t know how 
it happened. Jimmy, he swears he 
don’t know a thing, neither. God 
knows !” he concluded in a despair- 
ing rejection of his skepticism. 

“It is Old Man Herkimer?” 

“It ought to be. That’s what I 
put in there yesterday, Old Man 
Herkimer’s body. And I go to 
look at it today and — ” 

The face plate of the coffin was 
closed. “I’m going to have to leave 
it that way,” he said. “I can’t let 
’em see — I'll have to tell ’em coji- 
fidentiallike that he looked too — I 
don’t know. I’ll have to think of 
something.” 

He opened up the plate. Mac- 
Veagh looked in. It was a Herki- 
mer all right. There was no mis- 
taking the wide-set eyes and thin 
lips of that clan. But Old Man 
Herkimer, as the original copy for 
the item in the extra had read, was 
seventy-seven when he died. The 
body in the coffin — 

“Don’t look a day over seven- 
teen, does he?” said Jake Willis. ' 



WIS PRINT THE TRUTH 



137 



“Father Byrne,” said John Mac- 
Veagh, “I’m asking you this, not as 
a priest, but as the best-read scholar 
in Grover: Do miracles happen?” 
Father Byrne smiled. “It’s hard 
not to reply as a priest ; but I’ll try. 
Do miracles happen ? By dictionary 
definition, I’ll say yes; certainly.” 
He crossed the study to the stand 
which held the large unabridged 
volume. “Here’s what Webster calls 
a miracle: ‘An event or effect in 

the physical world beyond or out 
of the ordinary course of things, 
deviating from the known laws of 
nature, or,’ and this should be put 
in italics, ‘or transcending our 
knowledge of those laws.’ ” 
MacVeagh nodded. “I see. We 
obviously don’t know all the laws. 
We’re still learning them. And 
what doesn’t fit in with the little we 
know — " 

“ ‘An event,’ " the priest read on, 
“ ‘which cannot be accounted for by 
any of the known forces of nature 
and which is, therefore, attributed 
to a supernatural force.’ So you 
see miraculousness is more in the at- 
titude of the beholder than in the 
nature of the fact.” 

“And the logical reaction of a 
reasonable man confronted with an 
apparent miracle would be to test 
it by scientific method, to try to find 
the as yet unknown natural law 
behind it?” 

“I should think so. Again being 
careful not to speak as a priest." 
“Thanks, Father.” 

“But what brings all this up, 
John? Don’t tell me you have been 
hearing voices or such? I’d have 

138 



more hope of converting an atheist 
li‘ ake to the supernatural than 
a good hard-headed agnostic like 
you.” 

“Nothing, Father. I just got to 
thinking — Let you know if any- 
thing conies of it.” 

Philip Rogers was waiting for 
MacVeagh at the Sentinel office. 
There was a puzzling splash of 
bright red on his white cheek. 
Molly was there, too, typing with 
furious concentration. 

“I want to talk to you alone, 
Johnny,” Rogers said. 

Molly started to rise, but Mac- 
Veagh said, “Stick around. Handy 
things sometimes, witnesses. Well, 
Phil?” 

Philip Rogers glared at the girl. 
“I just wanted to give you a friendly 
warning, Johnny. You know as 
personnel manager out at the plant 
I get a pretty good notion of how 
the men are feeling.” 

“Too bad you’ve never put it over 
to H. A., then.” 

Philip shrugged. “I don’t mean 
the reds and the malcontents. Let 
Bricker speak for them — while he’s 
still able. I mean the good, solid 
American workers, fhat understand 
the plant and the management.” 

“H. A.’s company stooges, in 
short. O. K., Phil, so what are 
they thinking?” 

“They don’t like the way you’re 
playing up this murder. They think 
you ought to show a little sympathy 
for their boss in his bereavement. 
They think he’s got troubles enough 

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 



with Bricker and the Congressional 
committee.” 

MacVeagh smiled. "Now I get 
it.” 

“Get what?” 

“I’d forgotten about the commit- 
tee. So that’s what’s back of all 
the hush-hush. A breath of scandal, 
a suspicion that there might be a 
murderer in the Hitchcock clan — 
it could so easily sway a congress- 
man who was trying to evaluate the 
motives behind H. A.’s deals. He’s 
got to be Caesar’s wife. Above sus- 
picion.” 

“At least,” Philip said scornfully, 
“you have too much journalistic 
sense to print wild guesses like that. 
That’s something. But remember 
what I said about the men.” 

"So?” 

■"So they might decide to clean 
out the Sentinel some night.” 

MacVeagh’s hand clenched into a 
tight fist. Then slowly he forced it 
to relax. “Phil,” he said, “I ought 
to batter that pallor of yours to a 
nice healthy pulp. But you’re not 
worth it. Tell the company police 
I’m saving my fists for their vigi- 
lante raid. Now get out of here, 
while I’ve still got sense enough to 
hold myself back.” 

Philip was smiling confidently as 
he left, but his face was a trifle paler 
even than usual. 

MacVeagh expressed himself with 
calculated liberty on Philip Rogers’ 
ancestry, nature, and hobbies for 
almost a minute before he was aware 
of Molly. “Sorry,” he broke off to 
say, “but I meant it.” 



“Say it again for me, boss. And 
in spades.” 

“I should have socked him. He — ” 
MacVeagh frowned. “When I came 
in — it looked as though someone 

might alriady have had that pious 
notion.” He looked at Molly 

queerly. "Did you — ” 

“He made a pass at me,” Molly 
said unemotionally." “He thought 
maybe he could enlist me on their 
side that way, keep me from writing 
my stuff up. I didn’t mind the 

pass. Why I slapped him was, he 
seemed to think I ought to be flat- 
tered.” 

MacVeagh laughed. "Good girl.” 
He sat down at the other typewriter 
and rolled in a sheet of copy paper. 
“We’ll hold the fort.” He began 
to type. 

Molly looked up from her own 
copy. ‘'■Get any new leads, boss ?” 

“No,” he said reflectively. “This 
is just an experiment — ” He wrote : 

A sudden freakish windstorm hit 
Grover last night. For ten minutes win- 
dows rattled furiously, and old citizens 
began to recall the Great Wind of '97. 

The storm died down as suddenly as 
it came, however. No damage was done 
except to the statue of General Wigginsby 
in Courthouse Square, which was blown 
from its pedestal, breaking off the head 
and one arm. 

C., B. Tooly, chairman of the Grover 
Scrap Drive, expressed great pleasure at 
the accident. Members of the Civic Plan- 
ning Commission were reportedly even 
more pleased at the removal of Grover’s 
outstanding eyesore. 

He tore the sheet out of the type- 
writer. Then a perversely puckish 



WE PRINT THE TRUTH 



139 



thought struck him and he inserted 
another page. He headed it: 

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING 

Coroner Jake Willis has apparently 
abandoned his thirty-year stand of strict 
atheism. ‘‘In times like these," he said 
last night, “we need faith in something 
outside ourselves. I’ve been a stubborn 
fool for too long.” 

Molly spoke as he stopped typing. 
“What kind of experiment, boss?” 

“Let you know Friday,” he said. 
“Hold on tight, Molly. If this ex- 
periment works — ” 

For a moment he leaned back in 
his chair, his eyes aglow with visions 
of fabulous possibilities. Then he 
laughed out loud and got on with 
his work. 

III. 

No paper was ever gotten out by 
a more distracted editor than that 
Friday's issue of the Grover Set t- 

tinel. 

Two things preoccupied John 
MacVeagh. One, of course, was 
his purely rational experiment in 
scientific methods as applied to 
miracles. Not that he believed for 
an instant that whatever gestures 
Whalen Smith had woven in the air 
could impart to the Sentinel the 
absolute and literal faculty of print- 
ing the truth — and making it the 
truth by printing it. But the epi- 
sode of the seventeen-year-old 
corpse had been a curious one. It 
deserved checking — rationally and 
scientifically, you understand. 

And the other distraction was the 
effect upon Grover of the murder. 

no 



Almost, John MacVeagh was be- 
coming persuaded that his crusading 
truthfulness had been a mistake. 
Perhaps there was some justice in 
the attitude of the bkie noses who 
decry sensational publishing. Cer- 
tainly the town’s reaction to the 
sensational news was not healthy. 

On the one hand, inevitably, there 
was the group — vocally headed by 
Banker Manson — who claimed that 
what they called the “smear cam- 
paign” was a vile conspiracy be- 
tween MacVeagh and labor leader 
Tim Bricker. 

That was to be expected. With 
Manson and his crowd, you pushed 
certain buttons and you got certain 
automatic responses. But Mac- 
Veagh had not foreseen the reverse 
of the coin he had minted: the bit- 
terness and resentment among the 
little people. 

“Whatddaya expect?” he over- 
heard in Clem’s barber shop. “You 
take a guy like Hitchcock, you don't 
think they can do anything to him, 
do you? Why, them guys can get 
away with — ” The speaker stopped, 
as though that were a little more 
than he had meant to say. 

But there were other voices to 
take up his accusation. 

“Go ahead, Joe, say it. Get away 
with murder.” 

“Sure, who’s gonna try to pin a 
rap on the guy that owns the 
town ?” 

“What good's a police chief when 
he's all sewed up pretty in Hitch- 
cock's pocket?” 

“And the Sentinel don’t dare 
print half it knows. You all know 



ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 



the editor’s got a yen for Hitch- 
cock’s daughter. Well — ” 

“Somebody ought to do some- 
thing.” 

That last was the crystallized 
essence of their feeling. Somebody 
ought to do something. And those 
simple words can be meaningful and 
ugly. They were on many tongues 
in Germany in the ’20s. 

John MacVeagh thought about 
the sorcerer's apprentice, who sum- 
moned the powers beyond his con- 
trol. But, no, that was a pointed 
but still light and amusing story. 
This was becoming grim. If he and 
Molly could only crack this murder, 
cut through to the solution and 
dispel once and for all these un- 
satisfied grumblings — 

But how was that to be done? 
They had so few facts, and nothing 
to disprove the fantastic notion of 
a wandering tramp invading the up- 
per story of a fully occupied house 
without disturbing a soul save his 
victim. If some trick of psychologi- 
cal pressure could force a confes- 
sion — 

MacVeagh mused these problems 
as he walked back to the office after 
dinner on Thursday, and came re- 
gretfully to the conclusion that there 
was nothing to do but go on as per 
schedule: print Friday’s regular edi- 
tion with what follow-up was pos- 
sible on the murder story, and dig 
and delve as best they could to 
reach toward the truth. 

He frowned as he entered the of- 
fice. Sidewalk loafers weren't so 
common on Spruce Street. They 
hung out more on South, or down 



near the station on Jackson. But 
this evening there was quite a flock 
of them within a few doors of the 
Sentinel. 

Lucretius Sellers was chuckling 
over the copy he was setting up. 
"That sure is a good one you’ve got 
here on Jake, Johnny. Lord, I never 
did think I’d see the day — Maybe 
pretty soon we’l! see that ascetic 
atheist taking a drink, too. Which 
reminds me — ” 

He caught MacVeagh’s eye and 
paused. "Nope. Don’t know what 
I was going to say, Johnny.” He 
had been sober now since Whalen 
Smith’s departure had caused his 
sudden drafting back to his old pro- 
fession. And he knew, and Mac- 
Veagh knew, that the only way for 
him to stay sober was to climb com- 
pletely on the wagon. 

"Making out all right, Luke?” 
MacVeagh asked. 

"Swell, Johnny. You know, you 
think you forget things, but you 
don’t. Not things you learn with 
your hands, you don't. You ask me 
last week could 1 still set type and 
I’d say no. But there in my fingers 
— they still remembered. But look, 
Johnny — ” 

"Yes?” 

“This item about the Wigginsby 
statue. It’s a swell idea, but it just 
hasn’t happened. I was past there 
not an hour ago, and the old boy’s 
as big and ugly as ever. And be- 
sides, this says ‘last night.’ That 
means tonight — how can I set up 
what hasn’t happened yet?” 

“Luke, you’ve been grand to me. 
You’ve helped me out of a spot by 



WE PRINT THE TRUTH 



141 



taking over. But if I can impose 
on you just a leetle bit more — please 
don't ask any questions about the 
general’s statue. Just set it up and 
forget about it. Maybe I’ll have 
something. to tell you about that item 
tomorrow, maybe not. But in any 
case — ” 

His voice broke off sharply. He 
heard loud thumping feet in the 
front office. He heard Molly’s voice 
shrilling, “What do you want? You 
can’t all of you come crowding in 
here like this!” 

Another voice said, “We’re in, 
ain’t we, sister?” It was a calm, 
cold voice. 

“We’ve got work to do,” Molly 
persisted. “We’ve got a paper to 
get out.” 

“That,” said the voice, “is what 
you think.” There was a jangling 
crash that could be made only by a 
typewriter hurled to the floor. 

MacVeagh shucked his coat as 
he stepped into the front office. No 
time for rolling up sleeves. He 
snapped the lock on the door as he 
came through ; that’d keep them 
from the press for a matter of min- 
utes, anyway. He felt Luke at his 
heels, but he didn’t look. He walked 
straight to the towering redhead 
who stood beside Molly’s desk, the 
wrecked typewriter at his feet, and 
delivered the punch that he had 
neglected to give Phil Rogers. 

The redhead was a second too late 
to duck, but he rolled with it. His 
left came up to answer it with a 
short jab, but suddenly he stag- 
gered back. His face was a drip- 

142 



ping black mess, and he let out an 
angry roar. He charged in wide- 
open fury, and this time MacVeagh 
connected. 

He’d recognized the redhead. 
Chief of Hitchcock’s company po- 
lice. He’d heard about him — how 
he had a tough skull and a tougher 
belly, but a glass chin. For once, 
MacVeagh reflected, rumor was 
right. 

It was the silent quickness of the 
whole episode that impressed the 
other Hitchcock men and halted 
them for a moment. MacVeagh 
blessed Molly for her beautifully 
timed toss with the ink bottle. He 
glanced at her and saw that she now 
held her desk scissors ready in a 
stabbing grip. Luke Sellers held a 
wrench. 

But they were three, and there 
were a dozen men in the room be- 
side the fallen redhead. One of 
them stepped forward now', a 
swarthy little, man whose face was 
stubbled in blue-black save for the 
white streak of an old knife scar. 

“You shouldn’t ought to of done 
that,” he said. “Red didn’t mean 
you no harm, not personal. No 
roughhouse, see ? And if you listen 
to reason, why, O. K.” 

“And if I don’t?” MacVeagh 
asked tersely. 

“If you don’t? Well, then it looks 
like we’re going to have to smash up 
that pretty press of yours, mister. 
But there don’t nobody need to get 
hurt. You ain’t got a chance against 
the bunch of us. You might as well 
admit it if you don’t want us to 

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 



have to smash up that pretty puss 
of yours, too.” 

"What can we do?” Molly whis- 
pered. “He’s right ; we can’t stand 
them all off. But to smash the 
press — ” 

Luke Sellers waved his wrench 
and issued wholesale invitations to 
slaughter. 

Scarface grinned. "Call off the 
old man, mister. He’s apt to get 
hurt. Well, how’s about it? Do 
you let us in nice and peaceable or 
do we smash down the door?” 

MacVeagh opened a drawer of 
the desk and put his hand in. “You 
can try smashing,” he said, "if you 
don’t mind bullets.” 

“We don’t mind bluffs,” said 
Scarface dryly. “O. K., boys!” 

MacVeagh took his empty hand 
from the drawer. There was only 
one thing to do, and that was to 
fight as long as he could. It was 
foolish, pointless, hopeless. But it 
was the only thing that a man could 
do. 

The men came. Scarface had 
somehow managed wisely to drop to 
the rear of the charge. As they 
came, MacVeagh stooped. He rose 
with the wreck of the typewriter 
and hurled it. It took the first man 
out and brought the second thud- 
ding down with him. MacVeagh 
followed it with his fists. 

Luke Sellers, as a long-standing 
authority on barroom brawls, 
claimed that the ensuing fight lasted 
less than a minute. It seemed closer 
to an hour to MacVeagh, closer yet 
to an eternity. Time vanished and 
there was nothing, no thinking, no 



reasoning, no problems, no values, 
nothing but the ache in his body as 
blows landed on it and the joy in his 
heart as his own blows connected 
and the salt warmth of blood in his 
mouth. 

From some place a thousand light- 
vears away he heard a voice bellow- 
ing, "Quit it! Lay off!” The 
words meant nothing. He paid no 
more attention to them than did the 
man who at the moment held his 
head in an elbow lock and pum- 
meled it with a heavy ring-bearing 
fist. The voice sounded again as 
MacVeagh miraculously wriggled 
loose, his neck aching with the 
strain, and delivered an unorthodox 
knee blow to the ring-wearer. Still 
the voice meant nothing. 

But the shot did. 

It thudded into the ceiling, and 
its echoes rang through the room. 
The voice bellowed again, “Now do 
you believe I mean it? Lay off. 
All of you!” 

The sound and smell of powder 
wield a weighty influence in civilian 
reactions. The room was suddenly 
very still. MacVeagh wiped sweat 
and blood from his face, forced his 
eyes open, and discovered that he 
could see a little. 

He could see a tall gaunt man 
with crudely Lincolnian features 
striding toward him. He recognized 
the labor leader. “Sergeant Bricker, 
I presume?” he said'groggily. 

Bricker looked his surprise. "Ser- 
geant? MacVeagh, you’re punchy.” 

“Uh-huh.” MacVeagh cast dim 
eyes on the two armed bodyguards 
at the door, and at the restlessly 



WE PRINT THE TRUTH 



143 



obedient men of the company police, 
“Don’t you know? You're the U. S. 
marines.” 

Then somebody pulled a black- 
dotted veil over the light, which 
presently went out altogether. 

At first John MacVeagh thought 
it was a hangover. To he sure, he 
had never had a hangover like this. 
To be eouallv sure, he resolved that 
he never would again. A conven- 
tion of gnomes was holding high 
revels in his skull and demonstrating 
the latest in rock-drilling gadgets. 

He groaned and tried to roll over. 
His outflung arm felt emptiness, 
and his body started to slip. A firm 
hand shoved him back into place. 

He opened his eyes. They ached 
even more resolutely when open, 
and he quickly dropped his lids. 
But he had seen that he was on the 
narrow couch in the back office, 
that Molly’s hand had rescued him 
from rolling off, and that it was 
daylight. 

“Are you O. K., boss?” Molly’s 
voice was softer than usual. 

“I’ll be all right as soon as they 
shovel the dirt in on me.” 

“Can you listen while I tell you 
things ?” 

“I can try. Tell me the worst. 
What did I do? Climb chandeliers 
and sing bawdy ballads to the 
Ladies’ Aid?” 

He heard Molly laugh. “You 
weren't plastered, boss. You were 
in a fight. Remember?” 

The shudder that ran through 
him testified to his memory. “I re- 
member now. Hitchcock’s little 

144 



playmates. And Bricker showed up 
and staged the grand rescue and I 
passed out. Fine upstanding hero 
I am. Can't take it — ” 

“You took plenty. Doc Ouillan 
was worried about a concussion at 
first. That’s why he had us keep 
you here — didn’t want to risk mov- 
ing you home. But he looked at you 
again this morning and he thinks 
you’ll be O. K.” 

“And I never even felt it. Ex- 
alted. that’s what I must’ve been. 
Wonderful thing, lust of battle. 
This morning! Sunlight!” He 
forced his eyes open and tried to sit 
up. “Then it’s Friday! Tire paper 
should be — ” 

Molly pushed him back. “Don't 
worry, boss. The Sentinel came 
out this morning. Everything’s 
hunky-dory. Bricker lent us a cou- 
ple of men to help, and it’s all 
swell.” 

“Bricker — Where’d we be with- 
out him? A god out of the ma- 
chinists’ union. And the paper’s 
out — ” Suddenly he tried to sit 
up again, then decided against it. 
“Molly!” 

“Yes, boss?" 

“Have you been in Courthouse 
Square this morning?” 

“No, boss. Doc Quillan said I 
ought to — I mean, there’s been so 
much to do here in the office — ” 
“Have you seen Jake?” 
“Uh-huh. That was funny. He 
dropped in this morning. I think 
he heard about the ruckus and 
wanted to see was there anything in 
his line of business. And has he 
changed !” 

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 



“Changed?” What voice Mac- 
Veagli had was breathless. 

"He practically delivered a ser- 
mon. All about what a fool he’s 
been and man cannot live by bread 
alone and in times like these and 
stuff. Grover isn’t going to seem 
the same without Jake’s atheism.” 
"Scientific method — ” said Mac- 
Veagh. 

“What do you mean, boss?” 
"Molly, there’s something I’ve got 
to tell you about the Sentinel. You'll 
think I’m crazy maybe, but there’s 
too much to disregard. You’ve got 
to believe it.” 

“Boss, you know I believe every 
word you say.” She laughed, but 
the laugh didn't succeed in discount- 
ing her obvious sincerity. 
“Molly—” 

“Hi, MacVeagh! Feeling fit 
again ? Ready to take on a dozen 
more finks?” 

MacVeagh focused his eyes on 
the gangling figure. “Bricker! I’m 
glad to see you. Almost as glad as 
I was last night. I don’t feel too 
bright and loquacious yet, but when 
I do, consider yourself scheduled 
for the best speech of gratitude ever 
made in Grover.” 

Bricker waved one hand. “That’s 
O. K. Nothing to it. United front. 
We’ve got to gang up— victims of 
oppression. Collective security.” 
"Anything I can do for you — ” 
“You're doing plenty.” Bricker 
pulled up a chair and sat down, his 
long legs -sprawling in front of him. 
“You know, MacVeagh, I had you 
figured wcong.” 



“How so?”, 

“I thought you were just another 
editor. You know, a guy who joins 
liberal committees and prints what 
the advertisers want. But I had the 
wrong picture. You’ve got ideas 
and the guts to back 'em.” 

MacVeagh basked. Praise felt 
good after what he’d been through. 
But Bricker’s next words woke him 
up. 

“How much did you try to shake 
Hitchcock down for?” 

“How much — I — Why — 

Look, Bricker, I don’t get you.” 
Bricker eased himself more com- 
fortably into the chair and said, “He 
don’t shake easy. Don’t I know ! 
But a tree with them apples is worth 
shaking.” 

"You mean you’re . . . you've 
been blackmailing Hitchcock?” 

“I can talk to you, MacVeagh. 
Nobody else in this town has got 
the guts or the sense to see my 
angle. But you’ve got angles of 
your own, you can understand. 
Sure I’ve been shaking him down. 
Before I moved in on that local, it 
sounded like a Socialist Party pink 
tea. ‘Better working conditions. 
A living wage. Rights of labor.’ ” 
He expressed his editorial comment 
in a ripe raspberry. “I saw the pos- 
sibilities and I took- over. Old 
Hasenberg and the rest of those 
boys — they don’t know from noth- 
ing about politics. A few plants, a 
little pressure, and I was in — but 
for good. Then I put it up to H. A. : 
‘How much is it worth to you to 
get along without strikes?’” 



WE PRINT THE TRUTH 



14 5 



MacVeagh opened his mouth, but 
the words stuck there. 

“So you see?” Bricker went on 
calmly. “We can work together. 
The more pressure you put on 
Hitchcock with this murder scandal, 
the more he can’t afford to risk 
labor trouble. And vice, as the 
fellow says, versa. So you can 
count on me any time you need 
help. And when this blows over — 
There’s lots more can happen, Mac- 
Veagh, lots more. Between us, we 
can wind up owning this town. 

“Keep the murder story running 
as long as you can. That’s my 
advice. If it begins to look like a 
solution that’ll clear Hitchcock and 
his family, keep it quiet. Keep the 
pressure on him, and he’ll kick 
through in the end. I know his 
type — What it is you’re really 
after, MacVeagh? Just cash, or 
the daughter?” 

MacVeagh was still speechless. 
He was glad that Luke Sellers came 
in just then. It kept him from sput- 
tering. 

Luke was fair to middling speech- 
less himself. He nodded at Bricker 
and Molly and finally he managed 
to say, “Johnny, if I hadn't been on 
the wagon for two days I swear I’d 
go on and stay there!” 

Bricker looked interested. 

"What’s happened ?” 

"“You were in Courthouse 

Square,” said John MacVeagh. 

“That’s it, all right. I was in 
Courthouse Square. And General 
Wigginsby has enlisted in the scrap 
drive. Funny freak wind last night, 
the boys at Clem’s say. Didn’t do 

146 



any other damage. But, Johnny, 
how you knew — ” 

“YVhat is all this?” Bricker broke 
in. “What’s the angle on the statue, 
MacVeagh ?” 

The editor smiled wearily. “No 
angle, Bricker. Not the way you 
mean. Nothing you’d understand. 
But maybe something that’s going 
to make a big difference to you and 
your angles.” 

Bricker glanced at Molly and 
touched his head. “Still don’t feel 
so good, huh? Well, I’ve got to 
be getting along. I’ll drop in again 
off and on, MacVeagh. We’ve got 
plans to make. Glad I helped you 
last night and remember: keep up 
the good work.” 

Luke Sellers looked after the lean 
figure. “What’s he mean by that?” 
“Not what he thinks he means,” 
said John MacVeagh, “I hope. Out 
of the frying pan — ” 

Molly shuddered. “He’s as bad 
as LI. A. Hitchcock.” 

“Just about. And if I hush up 
the murder, I’m playing H. ‘A.’s 
game, and if I give it a big play, 
I’m stooging for Bricker’s racket. 
I guess,” he said thoughtfully, 
“there’s only one thing to do — 
Molly, Luke ! We’re getting out an- 
other extra.” 

“Life,” said Luke Sellers, “used 
to be a sight simpler before I went 
and got sober. Now nothing makes 
any sense. An extra ? What for ?” 
“We're going to get out another 
extra,” MacVeagh repeated. “To- 
morrow. And the banner head is 
going to be : MURDERER CON- 
FESSES.” 

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 




"But, boss, how do we know — ” 

Luke Sellers was thinking of Gen- 
eral Wigginsby. "Hush, Molly,” 
he said. "Let’s see what happens.” 

IV. 

MURDERER CONFESSES 

At a late hour last night, the murderer 
of Mrs. Agnes Rogers walked into the 
Grover police station and gave himself 



up. Police Oiief J. B. Hanby is holding 
him incommunicado until his confession 
has been checked. 

The murderer’s identity, together with 
a full text of his confession, will be re- 
leased in time for a further special edition 
of the Sentinel later today, Chief Hanby 
promises. 

This story was set up and printed 
in the Grover Sentinel late Friday 
night and was on sale early Satur- 
day morning. At eleven fifty- live 



WE PRINT THE TRUTH 



147 




p. m„ Friday, Neville Markham, 
butler to Mrs. Agnes Rogers, 
walked into the police station and 
confessed to the murder. 

“ ‘The butler did it,’ ” said Molly 
between scornful quotation marks. 

“After all,” said John MacVeagh, 
“I suppose sometime the butler 
must do it. Just by the law of 
averages.” 

It was Saturday night, and the 
two of them were sitting in the office 
talking after the frantic strain of 
getting out the second extra of the 
day. Luke Sellers had gone home 
and gone to bed with a fifth. 

“A man can stay a reformed char- 
acter just so long,” he said, “and 
you won't be needing me much for 
a couple of days. Unless," he 
added, “you get any more brilliant 
inspirations before the fact. Tell 
me. Johnny, how did you — ” But 
he let the query trail off unfinished 
and went home, clutching his fifth 
as though it were the one sure thing 
in a wambling world. 

The second extra had carried the 
butler’s whole story : how he. a good 
servant of the Lord, had endured as 
long as he could his mistress' search- 
ing for strange gods until finally a 
Voice had said to him, “Smite thou 
this evil woman,” and he smote. 
Afterward he panicked and tried to 
make it look like robbery. He 
thought he had succeeded until, Fri- 
day night, when the same Voice 
said to him, “Go thou and proclaim 
thy deed." and he went and pro- 
claimed. 

MacVeagh wished he’d been 

148 



there. He'd bet the butler and 
Chief Hanby had fun swapping 
texts. 

“ ‘The butler did it.’ ” Molly re- 
peated. “And I never so much as 
mentioned the butler in my stories. 
You don't even think of butlers — 
not since the twenties.” 

“Well, anyway, the murder is 
solved. That’s the main thing. No 
more pressure from either Hitch- 
cock or Bricker. No more mum- 
bling dissension in Grover.” 

“But don’t you feel . . . oh, I 
don’t know . . . cheated? It’s no 
fun when a murder gets solved that 
way. If you and I could’ve figured 
it out and broke the story, or even 
if Chief Hanby had cracked it with 
dogged routine — But this wav it's 
so flat.” 

“Weary, fiat, and stale, Molly, I 
agree. But not unprofitable. We 
learned the truth, and the truth has 
solved a lot of our problems." 
“Only—” 

“Yes. Molly?" 

“Only, boss — How? I've got 
to know how. How could you know 
that the butler was going to hear 
another Voice and confess? And 
that isn’t all. Luke told me about 
General Wigginsby." 

Molly had never seen John Mac- 
Veagh look so serious. "All right,” 
he said. “I've got to tell somebody, 
anyway. It eats at me — O. K. 
You remember how Whalen left so 
abruptly ? Well — ” 

Molly sat wide-eyed and agape 
when he finished the story. “Ordi- 
narily,” she said at last, “I’d say you 
were crazy, boss. But Old Man 

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE FICTION 



Herkimer and General Wigginsby 
and the butler — What was 
Whalen—” 

MacVeagh had wondered about 
that, too. Sometimes he could still 
almost feel around the office the lin- 
gering presence of that gaunt old 
man with the books you couldn’t 
read and the beard that wasn't there. 
What had he been ? 

"And what’re you going to do, 
boss? It looks like you can do 
practically anything. If anything 
we print in the paper turns out to 
be tbe truth — What are vou going 
to do?” 

"Come in !” MacVeagh yelled, as 
someone knocked on the door. 

It was Father Byrne, followed by 
a little man whose blue eyes were 
brightly alive in his old seamed 
face. “Good evening, John, Molly. 
This is Mr. Hasenberg — you’ve 
probably met him. Used to head 
the union out at the Hitchcock plant 
before Tim Bricker moved in.” 
“Evening, folks,” said Mr. Hasen- 
berg. He tipped his cap with a hand 
which was as sensitive and alive as 
his eyes — the hardened, ready hand 
of a skilled workman. 

MacVeagh furnished his guests 
with chairs. Then he said, “To 
what am I indebted and such?” 
“Mr. Hasenberg has a problem, 
John, and it’s mine, too. And it’s 
yours and everybody's. Go on, sir.” 
Mr. Hasenberg spoke in a dry, 
precise tone. “Bricker’s called a 
strike. We don’t want to . strike. 
We don't like or trust Hitchcock, 
but we do trust the arbitration com- 
mittee that Father Byrne's on. 



We’ve accepted their decision, and 
we still hope we can get the man- 
agement to. But Bricker put over 
tbe strike vote with some fancy 
finagling, and that’ll probably mean 
the army taking over the plant.” 
“And I know Bricker — ” said 
MacVeagh. “But where do I come 
in?” 

“Advice and publicity,” said Fa- 
ther Byrne. “First, have you any 
ideas? Second, will you print this 
statement Mr. Hasenberg's prepared 
on the real stand of the men, with- 
out Bricker’s trimmings?” 

“Second, of course. First — ” He 
hesitated. “Tell me, Mr. Hasen- 
berg, if you were free of Bricker, 
do you think you could get the man- 
agement to come to terms?” 

“Maybe. They ain’t all like 
Hitchcock and Phil Rogers. There's 
some of them want to get the stuff 
out and the war won as bad as we 
do. Now ever since Mathers went 
to Washington, the post of general 
manager’s been vacant. Supposing 
now Johansen should get that ap- 
pointment — he’d string along with 
the committee's decision, I’m pretty 
sure.” 

MacVeagh pulled a scratch pad 
toward him. “Johansen — . First 
name ?” 

“Boss! You aren’t going to — ” 
“Sh, Molly. And now, Father, 
if you could give me an outline of 
the committee’s terms — ” 

So Ingve Johansen became gen- 
eral manager of the Hitchcock plant 
and Mr. Hasenberg resumed control 
of the union after evidence had been 



WE PRINT THE TRUTH 



14 # 



uncovered which totally discredited 
Tim Bricker, and the arbitrated 
terms of the committee were ac- 
cepted by labor and management 
and the joint labor-management 
council got off to a fine start, all of 
which the burghers of Grover read 
with great pleasure in the Sentinel. 

There was another important 
paragraph in that Friday’s issue: an 
announcement that starting in an- 
other week the Sentinel was to be- 
come a daily. 

“We’ve got to, Molly,” Mac- 
Veagh had insisted. “There’s so 
much we can do for Grover. If we 
can settle the troubles at Hitchcock, 
that’s just a start. We can make 
this over into the finest community 
in the country. And we haven’t 
space in one small weekly edition. 
With a daily we can do things grad- 
ually, step by step — ” 

“And what, boss, do we use for 
money? That’ll mean more presses, 
more men, more paper. Where’s 
the money coming from ?” 

“That.” said John MacVeagh. “I 
don’t know.” 

And he never did. There was 
simply a small statement in the pa- 
per: 

ANONYMOUS 

BENEFACTOR EN- 
DOWS SENTINEL 

Mr. Manson was never able to 
find & teller who remembered re- 
ceiving that astonishingly large de- 
posit made to the credit of the Sen- 
tinel’s account ; but there it was, all 
duly entered. 

iso 



And so the Grover Sentinel be- 
came a daily, printing the truth. 

V. 

If it’s all right with you, we’ll 
skip pretty fast over the next part 
of the story. The days of triumph 
never make interesting reading. The 
rise and fall — that's your dramatic 
formula. The build-up can be stir- 
ring and the letdown can be tragic, 
but there's no interest in the flat 
plateau at the top. 

So there’s no need to tell in detail 
all that happened in Grover after 
the Sentinel went daily. You can 
imagine the sort of thing : How the 
Hitchcock plant stepped up its pro- 
duction and turned out a steady flow 
of war materiel that was the pride of 
the county, the State, and even the 
country. How Doc Quillan tracked 
down, identified, and averted the 
epidemic that threatened the work- 
ers' housing project. How Chief 
Hanby finally got the goods on the 
gamblers who were moving in on 
the South Side and cleaned up the 
district. How the Grover Red Cross 
drive went a hundred percent over 
its quota. How the expected meat 
shortage never materialized — You 
get the picture. 

All this is just the plateau, the 
level stretch between the Rise and 
the fall. Not that John MacVeagh 
expected the fall. Nothing like that 
seemed possible, even though Molly 
worried. 

“You know, boss.” she said one 
day, “I was reading over some of 
the books I used to love when I was 

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 



a kid — This wish — it’s magic, 

isn’t it?” 

MacVeagh snapped the speaking- 
box on his desk and gave a succinct 
order to the assistant editor. He 
was the chief executive of a staff 
now'. Then he turned back and 
said, ‘‘Why, yes, Molly, I guess you 
might call it that. Magic, miracle 
— what do we care so long as it en- 
ables us to accomplish all we’re do- 
ing?” 

“I don't know. But sometimes I 
get scared. Those books, especially 
the ones by E. Nesbit — ” 

MacVeagh grinned. “Scared of 
kids' books?” 

“I know' it sounds silly, boss, but 
kids’ books are the only place you 
can find out about magic. And 
there seems to be only one sure 
thing about it: You can know 

there’s a catch to it. There’s always 
a catch.” 

MacVeagh didn’t think any fur- 
ther about that. What stuck in his 
mind was phrases like those he 
heard down at Clem’s barber shop: 

“Hanged if I know what’s come 
over this burg. Seems like for a 
couple of months there just can’t 
nothing go w’rong. Ever since that 
trouble out at the plant when they 
got rid of Bricker, this burg is just 
about perfect, seems like.” 

Those were fine words. They fed 
the soul. They made you forget 
that little nagging undefined discon- 
tent that was rankling underneath 
and threatening to spoil all this won- 
derful miracle — or magic, if you pre- 
fer. They even made you be polite 
to H. A. Hitchcock w'hen he came 



to pay his respects to you after the 
opening of the new Sentinel Build- 
ing. 

He praised MacVeagh as an out- 
standing example of free enterprise. 
(A year or so ago he would have 
said rugged individualism, but the 
phrase had been replaced in his vo- 
cabulary by its more noble-sound- 
ing synonym.) He probed with 
man-to-man frankness trying to 
learn where the financial backing 
had come from. He all but apolo- 
gized for the foolish misunderstand- 
ing over the butler’s crime. And he 
ended up with a dinner invitation in 
token of reconciliation. 

MacVeagh accepted. But his 
feelings were mixed, and they were 
even more mixed w>hen he dropped 
into the office on the night of the 
dinner, resplendent in white tie and 
tails, to check up some last-minute 
details on the reports of the elec- 
tion for councilman. He had just 
learned that Grizzle had had some 
nasty semi-Fascist tie-ups a year 
earlier, and must not be allowed to 
be elected. 

“I don’t know what’s the matter.” 
he confided to Molly after he’d at- 
tended to business. “I ought to be 
sitting on top of the world, and 
somehow I’m not. Maybe I almost 
see what the trouble is : No heavy.” 

“What does that mean, boss?” 

“No opposition. Nothing to fight 
against. Just wield my white magic 
benevolently and that’s that. I need 
a black magician to combat me on 
my own level. You’ve got to have 
a heavy.” 

“Are you so sure,” Molly asked, 



VPE PRINT THE TRUTH 



151 



“that yours is white magic?” 

“Why—” 

“Skip it, boss. But I think I 
know one thing that’s the matter. 
And I think, God help me, that 
you’ll realize it tonight.” 

Molly’s words couldn't have been 
truer if she had printed them in the 
Sentinel. 

The party itself was painful. Not 
the dinner; that was as admirable 
as only H. A. Hitchcock's chef could 
contrive. But the compa ny had been 
carefully chosen to give MacVeagh 
the idea that, now that he was mak- 
ing such a phenomenal success of 
himself, he was to be welcomed 
among the Best People of Grover. 

There were the Mansons, of 
course, and Phil Rogers, and Major 
General Front, U. S. A., retired, 
and a half dozen others who formed 
a neat tight little society of mutual 
admiration and congratulation. The 
only halfway human person present 
seemed to be the new general man- 
ager of the plant. Johansen ; but he 
sat at the other end of the table from 
MacVeagh, in the dominating 
shadow of Mrs. Manson’s bosom. 

MacVeagh himself was loomed 
over by Mrs. Front, who gave her 
own interpretation of the general's 
interpretation of the plans of the 
High Command, He nodded duti- 
fully and gave every impression of 
listening, while he saw and heard 
and felt nothing but Laura Hitch- 
cock across the table. 

Every man dreams of Helen, but 
to few is it ever given to behold the 
face that can launch a thousand 

152 



ships. This is well. Life is compli- 
cated enough, if often pleasantly so, 
when we love a pretty girl, a charm- 
ing girl, a sweet girl. But when we 
see beauty, pure and radiant and ab- 
solute, we are lost. 

MacVeagh had been lost since he 
first arrived in Grover and old Jona- 
than Minter sent him to cover Lau- 
ra's coming-out party. After that 
she had gone East to college and he 
had told himself that it was all the 
champagne. He couldn’t have seen 
what his heart remembered. 

Then she came back, and since 
then no moment of his life had ever 
seemed quite complete. He never 
knew how he stood with her; he 
never even knew what she was like. 
He would begin to get acquainted 
with her, and then she would be off 
to visit her aunt in Florida or her 
cousins, before the war. in France. 
Since the war she had stayed in 
Grover, busy with the various vol- 
unteer activities entailed by her po- 
sition as H. A. Hitchcock’s daugh- 
ter. He was beginning to know her. 
he thought; he was beginning to 
reach a point where — 

And then came the murder and 
the quarrel with Hitchcock. And 
this was the first time that he had 
seen her since then. 

She smiled and seemed friendly. 
Evidently, like her father, she looked 
upon MacVeagh with a new regard 
since he had begun his mysteriously 
spectacular climb to success. 

She even exchanged an intimate 
and shuddering glance with him 
after dinner, when Mrs. Manson be- 
gan to sing American folk ballads 

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE FICTION 



", 



in the drawing room. MacVeagh 
took courage and pointed to the 
open French window behind her. 

His throat choked when she ac- 
cepted the hint. He joined her on 
the lawn, and they strolled quietly 
over to the pond, where the croak- 
ing monotone of the frogs drowned 
out the distant shrilling of Mrs. 
Manson. 

“What gets me,” MacVeagh 
grunted, “is the people that call all 
that wonderful stuff ‘ballads.’ 
They’re just plain songs, and good 
ones. And where they belong is a 
couple of guys that love them trying 
them out wijh one foot on the rail 
and the barkeep joining in the har- 
mony. When the fancy folk begin 
singing them in drawing rooms with 
artistically contrived accompani- 
ments — ” 

“I guess I’ll just have to do with- 
out them then,” said Laura. “I 
can’t see myself in your barroom.” 

“Can't you?” There must have 
been something in the moon that 
stirred MacVeagh’s daring. "Why 
not? There's a good, plain, honest 
bar not a mile from here that I like. 
Why don’t we ditch the party and 
go—” 

, “Oh, John. Don’t be silly. We 
couldn't. We’re not bright young 
people and it isn’t smart to be like 
that any more. Everybody’s seri- 
ous now ; this is war. And besides, 
you know, you have to think more 
of the company vou’re seen in now.” 

"Me?” 

“Of course, John. Father’s been 
telling me how wonderfully you’re 
coming on. You're getting to be 

WE PRINT THE TRUTH 



somebody. You have to look out 
for appearances.” 

“I’m afraid” — MacVeagh grinned 
— “I have congenitally low tastes. 
Can’t I be a big-shot editor and still 
love the riff and the raff?” 

“Of course not.” She was per- 
fectly serious, and MacVeagh felt 
a twinge of regret that such perfec- 
tion of beauty was apparently not 
compatible with the least trace of 
humor. “You have to be thinking 
about settling down now.” 

“Settling down — ” he repeated. 
This was so pat a cue, if he could 
get that lump out of his throat and 
go on with it. “You’re right, Laura. 
At my age — ” His voice was as 
harsh a croak as the frogs’. 
“What’s the matter, John?” 

He harrumphed. “Something in 
my throat — But it’s true. A man 
needs a wife. A man — ” 

“Marriage is a wonderful thing, 
isn't it? I’ve only just lately been 
realizing how wonderful.” 

He leaned toward her. “Laura — ” 
“John. I feel like telling you some- 
thing, if you'll promise not to go 
printing it.” 

“Yes—” 

“It’s a secret yet, but — I’m going 
to be married.” 

There was a distant patter of ap- 
plause for Mrs. Manson, and the 
frogs croaked louder than ever. 
These were the only noises that ac- 
companied the end of the world. 

For a moment there was a blank- 
ness inside John MacVeagh. He 
felt as though he had received a 
harder blow than any taken in the 

153 



fight with Hitchcock’s stooges. And 
then came the same reaction as he 
had known to those blows : the lust 
for battle. The lump in his throat 
was gone and words were pouring 
out. He heard the words only half- 
consciously, hardly aware that his 
own brain must be formulating 
them. He heard them, and was 
aghast that any man could lay bare 
his desires so plainly, his eery soul. 

They were pitiful words, and yet 
powerful — plaintive, and yet de- 
mandingly vigorous. And they were 
finally stopped by Laura's voice cut- 
ting across them with a harsh, 
“John !’’ 

“John,” she said again more 
softly. “I — Believe me, I never 
knew you felt like this I never 
would have — You’re nice. You’re 
sweet, and I like you. But I could- 
n’t ever love you. I couldn’t ever 
possibly marry you. Let’s go back 
inside, John. Mrs. Manson must be 
through by now. What’s the mat- 
ter? Aren’t you coming? John. 
Please." 

But John MacVeagh stood mo- 
tionless by the pool while Laura 
went on back to the big house. He 
listened to the frogs for a while and 
then he went to the good, plain hon- 
est bar not a mile away and listened 
to some “ballads.” 

After the third whiskey the numb- 
ness began to lift. He began to see 
what he had to do. It must be Phil 
Rogers she was marrying. But he 
was her cousin, wasn’t he? Oh, no 
— he was her aunt's husband’s 
nephew. That made it all right. 

But there was a way out. Thejjp 

is* 



was the one sure way. All right, so 
it was selfish. So it was abusing a 
great and mysterious power for pri- 
vate ends. But the custodian of 
that power had some privileges, 
didn’t he? And if he had one and 
only one prayer on earth — 

After the seventh whiskey he 
went back to the office. It took him 
three tries to turn out legible copy. 
He hadn’t written a word for the 
Social Notes since Molly had joined 
the staff, and besides the machine 
seemed to resent the drunken paw- 
ing of his fingers. 

But he made it at last, and it ap- 
peared in the next day’s Sentinel, 
and H. A. Hitchcock' said to his 
daughter, “Wish you'd told me, 
first, Laura. But I must say I think 
it’s a fine idea. He’s a comer, that 
boy. And maybe if you can use a 
little influence with him — Useful 
thing, having a newspaper editor in 
the family. You can keep him in 
hand.” 

What came next is more plateau 
that we don’t need to examine in 
detail. At least, apparently plateau ; 
a discerning eye might see the start 
of the fall already. Because lives 
don’t make nice clear graphs. The 
rise and the fall can be going on at 
once, and neither of them notice- 
able. 

So we can accept as read all the 
inevitable preparations for such an 
event as the wedding of H. A. 
Hitchcock’s daughter, to the most 
promising young man in Grover. 
We can pass over the account of the 
white splendor of the wedding day 

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 



and the curiously anticlimactic night 
that followed. 

That was the night, too, when 
Molly, who never drank anything 
but beer, brought two fifths of 
whiskey to Luke Sellers’ boarding- 
house and sat up all night discussing 
them and other aspects of life. But 
the scene would be difficult to re- 
cord. Most of what she said would- 
n’t make any sense to a reader. It 
didn’t make much sense to Luke, 
nor to Molly herself the next morn- 
ing. 

We can skip by the details of how 
Grover solved the man-power short- 
age in the adjacent' farming terri- 
tory, and of how liberalism tri- 
umphed in the council election. We 
can go on to a Saturday night three 
months after Whalen Smith de- 
parted, leaving a wish behind him. 

John MacVeagh had been seeing 
quite a bit of Ingve Johansen since 
the Hitchcock dinner party. He was 
a man you kept running into at the 
luncheons you had to attend, and as 
your father-in-law’s general man- 
ager he was a man you had to have 
to dinner occasionally. 

And MacVeagh’s first impression 
. was confirmed : he was a good guy, 
this Johansen. A guy you’d be 
happy to have in a cracker-barrel 
session, only those sessions never 
seemed to come off any more. Run- 
ning a daily was a very different 
job from being editor of the old 
weekly Sentinel. And when so much 
responsibility rested on your slight- 
est word — you didn’t have time for 
a good bull session any more. 

But Johansen would have be- 



longed, just as Mr. Hasenberg 
would. Sometime he must get the 
two of them together away from the 
plant. For an executive like Johan- 
sen no more deserved to be judged 
by H. A. than Mr. Hasenberg did 
to be rated like Bricker. 

Besides all the lines of race or re- 
ligion or country or class, Mac- 
Veagh was beginning to feel, there 
was another basic dividing line 
among men: There are the good 

guys, the Men of Good Will, if you 
want to be fancy about it, and there 
are — others. 

Ingve Johansen was of the first ; 
and that’s why it hurt MacVeagh, 
when he dropped in that Saturday 
at his good, plain honest bar for a 
quick one, to find Johansen reduced 
to telling the bartender the story of 
his life. 

MacVeagh stayed in the bar 
longer than he’d intended. He 
steered the manager over to the cor- 
ner table and tried gently to find out 
what was eating him. For this was 
no ordinary drinking, but some com- 
pelling obsession. 

“Look,” MacVeagh said finally, 
"I know it’s none of my business, 
and if you want to tell me to go 
jump in a lake I’ll try and find one. 
But you’ve got something gnawing 
inside you, and if there’s anything 
I can do to help you — ” You can’t 
tell men that you have the power to 
ease their troubles; but if you can 
once learn the troubles — 

Johansen laughed. His heavy 
shock of blond hair hobbled with his 
laughter. He said, “How do you 



WE PRINT TIIE TRUTH 



105 



expect me to feel after vou stole my 
girl?” 

MacVeagh sat up straight. “Your 
girl ? You mean you’re the one that 
she—” 

“We were going to be married. 
Hadn’t sounded out H. A. yet, but 
it was all set. And first thing I 
know I read that piece in your pa- 
per — ” 

There was nothing to say. Mac- 
Veagh just sat there. He’d been 
sure it was the contemptible Phil 
Rogers. His conscience had felt 
clear. But now, watching the man 
she should have married — 

“The worst thing,” Johansen 
added, “is that I like you, Mac- 
Veagh. I don't even want to wring 
your neck for you. But Laura’d 
better be happy.” 

“She will be,” said MacVeagh 
flatly. He rose from the table stiffly, 
made arrangements with the bar- 
tender about getting Johansen home, 
and walked out. There was noth- 
ing he could do. 

No, he couldn’t even be generous 
and give her back. The scandal of 
a divorce — Magic doesn’t work 
backward. Was this the catch that 
Molly talked about? 

The second thing that happened 
that night was unimportant. But it 
makes a good sample of a kind of 
minor incident that cropped up oc- 
casionally on the plateau. 

On his way to the office, Mac- 
Veagh went past the Lyric. Pie ab- 
sently read the marquee and saw 
that the theater was playing “Rio 
Rhythm,” Metropolis Pictures’ lat- 
est well-intentioned contribution to 

156 



the Good Neighbor Policy. There 
were no patrons lined up at the box 
office — no one in the lobby at all 
save Clara in her cage and Mr. Mar- 
cus, looking smaller and unhappier 
than ever. 

He took the usual huge stogie 
out of his mouth and waved a de- 
spondent greeting to MacVeagh. 
The editor paused. “Poor house to- 
night?” he asked sympathetically. 

“Poor house, he says!” Mr. 
Marcus replaced the cigar and it 
joggled with his words. “Mr. Mac- 
Veagh, I give you my word, even 
the ushers won’t stay in the audi- 
torium !” 

MacVeagh whistled. “That bad ?” 

“Bad? Mr. MacVeagh, ‘Rio 
Rhythm’ is colossal, stupendous, 
and likewise terrific. But it smells 
yet.” 

“I don’t get it.” 

“Stink bombs, Mr. MacVeagh. 
Stink bombs they throw yet into the 
Lyric. A strictly union house I 
run, I pay my bills, I got no com- 
petitors, and now comes stink 
bombs. It ain’t possible. But it's 
true.” 

MacVeagh half guessed the an- 
swer even then. He got it in full 
with Molly’s first speech when he 
reached the office. 

“Boss, you’ve got to look after 
things better yourself. I don’t know 
how the copy desk let it get by. Of 
course, that kid you put onto han- 
dling movie reviews is green ; he 
doesn’t know there’s some things 
you just don’t say in a paper, true 
though they may be. But look!" 

MacVeagh looked, knowing what 

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE FICTION 



he would see. The movie review, a 
new department added experimen- 
tally since the Sentinel had ex- 
panded so, stated succinctly : “ ‘Rio 
Rhythm’ stinks.” 

John MacVeagh was silent for a 
long count. Then he said wryly, 
“It’s quite a responsibility, isn’t it, 
Molly?” 

“Boss,” she said, “you’re the only 
man in the world I’d trust with it.” 

He believed her — not that it was 
true, but that she thought it was. 
And that was all the more reason 
why — 

“You’re kidding yourself, Molly. 
Not that I don't like to hear it. But 
this is a power that should never be 
used for anything but the best. I’ve 
tried to use it that way. And to- 
night I've learned that — well, I’ll 
put in inadvertently to salve my con- 
science — that I’m ruining one man’s 
business and have destroyed anoth- 
er’s happiness. 

“It’s too much power. You can’t 
realize all its ramifications. It’s 
horrible — and yet it’s wonderful, 
too. To know that it’s yours — it 
... it makes you feel like a god, 
Mollv. No, more than that: Like 
God.” 

There was an echo in the back of 
his mind. Something gnawing 
there, something remembered — 

Then he hear the words as clearly 
as though they .were spoken in the 
room. Father Byrne’s unfinished 
sentence: "If you were God — ” 

And Jake Willis’ question that had 
prompted it: “Why doesn’t God 

stop the war?” 

Molly watched the light that came 



on in the boss’ eyes. It was almost 
beautiful, and still it frightened her. 

“Well,” said John MacVeagh, 
“why don't I ?” 

It took a little preparing. For 
one thing, he hadn’t tried anything 
on such a global scale before. He 
didn’t know if influence outside of 
Grover would work, though truth 
should be truth universally. 

For another, it took some advance 
work. He had to concoct an elabo- 
rate lie about new censorship regu- 
lations received from Washington, 
so that the tickers were moved into 
his private office and the foreign 
news came out to the rewrite staff 
only over his desk. 

And the public had to be built up 
to it. It couldn't come too suddenly, 
too unbelievably. He prepared sto- 
ries of mounting Axis defeats. He 
built up the internal dissension in 
Axis countries. 

And it worked. Associated Press 
reports from the battlefields referred 
to yesterday’s great victory which 
had been born on his typewriter. 
For one last experiment, he assas- 
sinated Goering. The press-associa- 
tion stories were crowded the next 
day with rumors from neutral coun- 
tries and denials from Berlin. 

And finally the front page of the 
Grover Sentinel bore nothing but 
two words : 

WAR ENDED 

MacVeagh deleted the exclama- 
tion points from the proof. There 
was no need for them. 



WE PRIXT THE TRUTH 



157 



VI. 

Excerpts from the diary of Hank 

Branson, F. B. I.: 

Washington, June 23rd. 

This looks to be the strangest case 
I ’ve tackled yet. Screwier than that 
Nazi ring that figured out a way to 
spread subversive propaganda 
through a burlesque show. 

The chief called me in this morn- 
ing, and he was plenty worried. 
“Did you ever hear of a town called 
Grover?" he asked. 

Of course I had. It’s where the 
Hitchcock plant is. So I said sure 
and t waited for him to spill the rest 
of it. But it took him a while. Al- 
most as though he was embarrassed 
bv what lie had to say. 

At last he came out with. “Hank, 
you’re going to think I’m crazy. 
But as best we can figure it out, this 
is the situation: All this country 

is at war with the Axis — excepting 
Grover.” 

“Since when,” I wanted to know, 
“do city councils have to declare 
war ?” 

So he tried to explain. “For two 
weeks now, the town of Grover has 
bad no part in the war effort. The 
Hitchcock plant has stopped pro- 
ducing and is retooling for peace 
production. The Grover draft board 
hasn’t sent in one man of its quota. 
The Grover merchants have stopped 
turning in their ration stamps. Even 
the tin-can collections have stopped. 
Grover isn’t at war." 

“But that’s nuts," I said. 

“I warned you. But that’s the 
case. We’ve sent them memoranda 

iss 



and warnings and notifications and 
every other kind of governmental 
scrap paper you can imagine. Ei- 
ther they don't receive them or they 
don’t read them. No answers, no 
explanations. We’ve got to send a 
man in there to investigate on the 
spot. And it’s got to be from our 
office. I don’t think an army man 
could keep his trigger finger steady 
at the spectacle of a whole commu- 
nity resigning from the war.” 

“Have you got any ideas?” I 
asked. “Anvthing to give me a 
lead.” 

The chief frowned. “Like you 
say, it’s nuts. There’s no account- 
ing for it. Unless — Look, now 
you’ll really think I’m crazy. But 
sometimes when I want to relax, I 
read those science-fiction magazines. 
You understand?” 

“They’re cheaper than blondes,” 
I admitted. 

“So this is the only thing that 
strikes me : some kind of a magnetic 
force field exists around Grover that 
keeps it out of touch with the rest 
of the world. Maybe even a tem- 
poral field that twists it into a time 
where there isn’t any war. Maybe 
the whole thing’s a new secret 
weapon of the enemy, and they’re 
trying it out there. Soften up the 
people for invasion by making them 
think it’s all over. Go ahead. 
Laugh. But if you think my an- 
swer’s screwy — and it is — just re- 
member: it’s up to you to find the 
right one.” 

So that's my assignment, and I 
never had a cockeyeder one: Find 

ASTOUNDING SCI BN CK -FICTION 



out why one town, out of this whole 
nation, has quit the war flat. 

ProutyvUle, June 24th. 

At least Proutyville’s what it says 
on the road map, though where I 
am says just MOTEL and that 
seems to be about all there is. 

I'm the only customer tonight. 
The motel business isn’t what it 
used to be. I guess that’s why the 
garage next door is already con- 
verted into a blacksmith's job. 

‘‘People that live around here, 
they've got to get into town now 
and then,” the old guy that runs it 
said to me. “So they’re pretty well 
converted back to horses already.” 

“I’ve known guys that were con- 
verted to horses,” I said. “But only 
partially." 

“I mean, converted to the use of 
horses.” There was a funny sort of 
precise dignity about this correction. 
“I am pleased to be back at the old 
work.” 

He looked old enough to have 
flourished when blacksmithing vas 
big time. I asked, “What did you 
do in the meanwhile?” 

“All kinds of metal trades. Print- 
ing mostly.” 

And that got us talking about 
printing and newspapers, which is 
right up my alley because Pop used 
to own the paper in Sage Bluffs and 
I've lately been tied up with most 
of the department’s cases involving 
seditious publications. 

“A paper can do a lot of harm,” 
I insisted. “Oh, I know it’s been 
the style to cry down the power of 
the press ever since the 1936 and 



1940 elections. But a paper still has 
a lot of influence even though it’s 
hard to separate cause and effect. 
For instance, do Chicagoans think 
that way because of the Tribune, or 
is there a T ribune because Chicago- 
ans are like that ?” 

From there on we got practically 
philosophical. He had a lot of 
strange ideas, that old boy. Mostly 
about truth. How truth was rela- 
tive, which there’s nothing new in 
that idea, though he dressed it up 
fancy. - And something about truth 
and spheres of influence — how a 
newspaper, for instance, aimed at 
printing The Truth, which there is 
no such thing as, but actually tried, 
if it was honest, to print the truth 
(lower case) for its own sphere of 
influence. Outside the radius of its 
circulation, truth might, for another 
editor, be something quite else again. 
And then he said, to himself like. 
“I’d like to hear sometime how that 
wish came out,” which didn't mean 
anything but sort of ended that dis- 
cussion. 

It was then I brought up my own 
little problem, and that’s the only 
reason I’ve bothered to write all this 
down, though there’s no telling what 
a crackpot blacksmith like that 
meant. 

It’s hard to get a clear picture of 
him in my mind now while I’m writ- 
ing this. He's tall and thin and he 
has a great beak of a nose. But 
what I can’t remember is does be 
have a beard ? I’d almost swear he 
does, and still — 

Anyway, I told him about Grover, 
naming no names, and asked him 



WE PRINT THE TRUTH 



169 



what he thought of that set-up. He 
liked to speculate; O. K., here was 
a nice ripe subject. 

He thought a little and said, “Is 
it Grover?” I guess some detail in 
my description of the plant and stuff 
tipped it off. I didn’t answer, but 
he went on : “Think over what I've 
said, my boy. When you get to 
Grover and see what the situation 

is, remember what we’ve talked 
about tonight. Then you’ll have 
your answer.” 

This prating hasn’t any place in 
my diary. I know that. I feel like 
a dope writing it down. But there’s 
a certain curious compulsion about 

it. Not so much because I feel that 
this is going to help explain what- 
ever is going on in Grover, but be- 
cause I’ve got this eerie sensation 
that that old man is like nothing else 
I’ve ever met in all my life. 

It’s funny. I keep thinking of my 
Welsh grandmother and the stories 
she used to tell me when I was so 
high. It’s twenty years since I’ve 
thought of those. 

Grover, June 25th. 

Nothing to record today but long 
tiresome driving over deserted high- 
ways. I wonder what gas rationing 
has done to the sales of Burma 
Shave. 

The roads were noticeably more 
populated as I got near Grover, 
even though it was by then pretty 
late. Maybe they’ve abolished that 
rationing, too. 

Too late to do any checking now ; 
I’ll get to work tomorrow, with my 

160 



usual routine of dropping in at the 
local paper first to gather a picture. 

Grover, June 26th. 

Two of the oddest things in my 
life with the F. B. I. have happened 
today. One, the minor one, is that 
I’ve somehow mislaid my diary, 
which is why this entry is written on 
note paper. The other, and what 
has really got me worried, is that 
I’ve mislaid my job. 

Just that. I haven’t the slightest 
idea why I am in Grover. 

It’s a nice little town. Small and 
cozy and like a thousand others, 
only maybe even more pleasant. It’s 
going great guns now, of course, 
reveling, like every place else, in the 
boom of post-war prosperity. 

There's a jigg\ catchy chorus in 
“The Chocolate Soldier” that goes 
“Thank the Lord the war is over, 
tum-tee-tum tee-tum tee-tover — ” 
Nice happy little tune; it ought to 
be the theme song of these times. It 
seems like only yesterday I was 
stewing, and all the rest of the de- 
partment with me, about saboteurs 
and subversive elements and all the 
other war-time problems. 

Only now I’ve got something else 
to stew about, which is why I’m 
here. 

I tried to get at it indirectly with 
John MacVeagh, a stolid sort of 
young man with heavy eybrows and 
a quiet grin, who edits the Grover 
Sentinel — surprisingly large and 
prosperous paper for a town this 
size. Daily, too. 

I liked MacVeagh — good guy. 
Says he didn’t serve in the war be- 

ASTOUNDI NG SCIENCE-FICTION 



cause a punctured eardrum kept him 
out, but says he tried his best to see 
Grover through it on the home 
front. We settled down to quite a 
confab, and I deliberately let it slip 
that I was from the F. B. I. I hoped 
that’d cue him into, “Oh, so you’re 
here on the Hungadunga case, 
hull?'’ But no go. No reaction at 
all, but a mild wonder as to what a 
G-man was doing in Grover. 

I didn't tell him. 

I tried the same stunt on the chief 
of police, who kept quoting Bible 
texts at me and telling me about a 
murder they had a while back and 
how he solved it. (Would you be- 
lieve it ? The butler did it ! Hon- 
est.) Nothing doing on the reac- 
tion business. Grover, ever since 
the famous murder, has had the most 
crime-free record in the State. 
Nothing in my line. 

Nothing to do but sleep on it and 
hope tomorrow turns up either my 
diary or my memory. 

Grover. June 27th. 

I like Grover. Now that the war’s 
over, the department’ll be cutting 
down on its staff. I might do worse 
than resign and settle down here. 
I've always wanted to try some 
pulp writing to show up the guys 
that write about us. And in a few 
years Qiief Hanby’ll be retiring, 
and if I’m established in the com- 
munity by then — 

And I’m going to have to get out 
of the department if things go on 
like this. Had a swell day today — 
visited the Hitchcock plant and saw r 
their fabulous new work with plas- 



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WE PRINT THE TRUTH 



161 



tics in consumers' goods, had din- 
ner at MacVeagh’s and went out to 
a picture and a bar on a double date 
with him and his wife — who is the 
loveliest thing I ever saw, if you like 
icicles — and a girl from the paper, 
who’s a nice kid. 

But I still don't know from noth- 
ing. 

I sent a wire back to the chief : 

WIRE FULL OFFICIAL INSTRUC- 
TIONS AT ONCE MY MISSION 
LOCAL POLICE CHIEF WANTS 
FORMAL O. K. 

I know, I know. It’s a thin story, . 
and it probably won’t work. But 
I’ve got to try something. 

Grover , June 28th. 

1 got an answer : 

YOUR QUOTE MISSION UN- 
QUOTE ALL A MISTAKE. RE- 
TURN WASHINGTON. 

I don’t get it. Maybe when I see 
the chief again — 

So now regretfully we bid fare- 
well to the sunny, happy town of 
( ’■rover, nestling at the foot — 

Proulyville, June 29th. 

As you — whoever you are and 
whatever you think you're doing 
reading other people’s diaries — can 
see, my diary’s turned up again. 
And that I am, as they say in the 
classics, stark raving mad seems 
about the only possible answer. 

Maybe I thought the chief was 
crazy. What’s he going to call me? 

T read over again what the old 
guy with — or without — the beard 

ice 



said. Where he said I’d find the 
answer. I didn’t. 

So I went over to see him again, 
but he wasn't there. There was a 
fat man drinking beer out of a quart 
bottle, and as soon as he saw me he 
poured a glassful and handed it over 
unasked. 

It tasted good and I said, 
‘‘Thanks, ” and meant it. Then I 
described the old boy and asked 
where was he. 

The fat man poured himself an- 
other glass and said, “Damfino. He 
come in here one day and says, ‘See 
you’re setting up to shoe horses. 
Need an old hand at the business?’ 
So I says, 'Sure, what's your name?’ 
and he says, ‘Wieland.’ leastways 
that’s what I think he says, like that 
beer out in California. ‘Wieland,’ 
he says. ‘I’m a smith,' so he goes 
to work. Then just this morning he 
up and says, ‘I’m needed more else- 
where,’ he says. ‘I gotta be going,’ 
he says, ‘now you been a swell em- 
ployer,’ he says, ‘so if you — ’ ” The 
fat man stopped. “So he up and 
quit me.” 

“Because you were a swell em- 
ployer ?” 

“That? That was just something 
he says. Some foolishness. Hey, 
your glass is empty.” The fat man 
filled my glass and his own. 

The beer was good. It kept me 
from quite going nuts. I sat there 
the most of the evening. Tt wasn’t 
till late that a kind of crawly feeling 
began to hit me. “Look.” I said. 
“I’ve drunk beer most places you 
can name, but I never saw a quart 
bottle hold that many glasses.” 

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 



The fat man poured out some 
more. "This?” he said, offhandlike. 
"Oh, this is just something Wieland 
give me.” 

And 1 suppose I’m writing all this 
out to keep from thinking about 
what I'm going to say to the chief. 
But what can I say? Nothing but 
this : 

Grover isn't at war. And when 
you're there, it’s true. 

Washington, June 30th. 

I’m not going to try to write the 
scene with the chief. It still stings, 
kind of. But he softened up a lit- 
tle toward the end. I’m not to be 
fired; just suspended. Farnsworth’s 
taking the Grover assignment. And 
I get a rest — 

Bide-a-wee Nursing Home, 

May 1st. 

VII. 

It was hot in the office tiiat June 
night. John MacVeagh should have 
been deep in his studies, but other 
thoughts kept distracting him. 

These studies had come to occupy 
more and more of his time. His re- 
sponsibilities were such that he 
could not tolerate anything less than 
perfection in his concepts of what 
was the desirable truth. 

Ending the war had been simple. 
But now the Sentinel had to print 
the truth of the post-war adjust- 
ments. Domestically these seemed 
to be working fine, at the moment. 
Demobilization was being carried 
out smoothly and gradually, and the 
startling technological improvements 



matured in secrecy during war time 
were now bursting forth to take up 
the slack in peace-thne production. 

The international scene was more 
difficult. The willful nationalism of 
a few misguided senators threatened 
to ruin any possible adjustment. 
MacVeagh had to keep those men 
in check, and even more difficult, he 
had to learn the right answers to all 
the problems. 

The eventual aim, he felt sure, 
must be a world State. But of 
what nature? He plowed through 
Clarence Streit and Ely Culbertson 
and everything else he could lay 
hands on, rejecting Culbertson’s 
overemphasis on the nation as a unit 
and Streit’s narrow definition of 
what constitutes democracy, but 
finding in each essential points that 
had to be fitted into the whole. 

MacVeagh’s desk was heavy with 
books and notes and card indexes, 
but he was not thinking of any of 
these things. He was thinking of 
Laura. 

The breaking point liad come that 
night they went out with Molly and 
the G-man. (Odd episode, that. 
Why a G-man here in peaceful Gro- 
ver? And so secretive about his 
mission and so abrupt in his depar- 
ture.) It might have been the pic- 
ture that brought it on, a teary opus 
in which Bette Davis suffered nobly. 

It was funny that he couldn’t re- 
member the words of the scene. Ac- 
cording to all tradition, they should 
be indelibly engraved on the tablets, 
et cetera. But he didn't remember 
the words, just the general pain and 
torture. 



WE PRINT THE TRUTH 



AST—. 



163 



Laura crying, crying with that 
helpless quiet desperation that is a 
woman’s way of drowning her sor- 
rows. Himself, puzzled, hurt, try- 
ing to help and comfort her. Laura 
shuddering away from his touch. 
Laura talking in little gasps between 
her sobs about how he was nice and 
she liked him and he was so good to 
her, but she didn't understand, she 
never had understood how she made 
up her mind to marry him and she 
would try to be a good wife, she did 
want to, but — 

He remembered those words. 
They were the only ones that stayed 
indelible : “ — I just don't love you." 

He had quieted her finally and 
left her red-eyed but sleeping. He 
slept that night, and all. the nights 
since then, in the guest room that 
some day was to be converted into 
a nursery. 

Was to have been converted. 

There's a catch, Molly said. Al- 
ways a catch. You can make your 
marriage true, but your wife's love — 

A man isn’t fit to be God. A 
woman who cannot love you is so 
infinitely more important than the 
relation of Soviet Russia to west- 
ern Europe. 

MacVeagh almost barked at Lu- 
cretius Sellers when he came in. 
The old printer was a regular visi- 
tor at the Sentinel. He wasn’t 
needed any longer, of course, with 
the new presses and the new staff 
that tended them. But he’d ap- 
pointed himself an unofficial mem- 
ber of the Sentinel’s forces, and 
MacVeagh was glad, though some- 
times wondering how much of the 

164 



truth about the truth Luke Sellers 
might guess. 

Tonight Luke glanced at the laden 
desk and grinned. ‘‘Hard' at it. 
Johnny?" He was sober, and there 
was worry in his eyes behind the 
grin. 

MacVeagh snapped his thoughts 
back from their desolate wander- 
ings. "Quite a job I’ve got,” he 
said. 

“I know. But if you’ve got a 
minute, John ny — ’ ’ 

MacVeagh made a symbolic ges- 
ture of pushing books aside. "Sure, 
Luke. What’s on your mind?" 

Luke Sellers was silent a little. 
Then, “I don't like to talk like this. 
Johnny. I wouldn't if I wasn't 
afraid you’d hear it somevvheres 
else. And Molly, even she thinks I 
ought to tell you. It’s getting her. 
She slapped Mrs. Manson’s face at 
the Ladies’ Aid last meeting. Not 
but what that's sensible enough, but 
she’s generally acting funny. Some- 
times I’m almost afraid maybe — ” 

He bogged down. 

"That's a heck of a preamble, 
Luke. What’s it leading up to? 
Here — want to oil up your larynx?’’ 

“Thanks. Johnny. Haven't had 
a drink all day — wanted to have my 
head clear to — But maybe this 
might help — Well, peace forever! 
Thanks.” 

“O. K. Now what?” 

"It's — Johnny, you’re going to 
kick me out of this office on my tail. 
But it’s about Mrs. MacVeagh.” 

"Laura?” 

“Now hold on, Johnny. Hold 
your horses. I know there’s noth- 

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 



ing in it, Molly knows there’s noth- 
ing in it, but it's the way people 
around town are talking. She’s been 
seeing a lot of that manager out at 
the plant, what's-his-name, Johan- 
sen. You work here late at nights 
and — Phil Rogers, he saw them 
out at Cardotti's roadhouse. So did 
Jake Willis another night. And I 
just wanted — Well, Johnny, I’d 
rather you heard it from me than 
down at Clem's barber shop.” 
MacYeagh’s face was taut. “It’s 
no news to me, Luke. I know she's 
lonely when I work here. Fact is. 
I asked Johansen to show her a lit- 
tle fun. He's a good guy. You 
might tell that to Mrs. Manson and 
the boys at Clem's.” 

Luke Sellers stood looking at 
MacYeagh. Then he took another 
drink. “I If spread it around, 
Johnny.” 

"Thanks. Luke." 

“And I hope I can make it sound 
more convincing than you did.” 

He left. John MacYeagh sat si- 
lent, and the room was full of voices. 

“How does it feel. MacVeagh? 
Wliat’s it like to know that your 
wife — No, MacYeagh, don’t rub 
your forehead. You’ll pride your- 
self on the horns — ” 

“Don't listen, MacVeagh. It’s 
just people. People talk. It doesn't 
mean anything.” 

"Where there’s smoke, Mac- 
Yeagh — Remember? You didn't 
think there was any fire in Laura, 
did you? But where there’s smoke 
there's — ” 

“You could fix it. you know. You 



could fix it, the way you fix every- 
thing. Something could happen to 
Johansen.” 

“Or if you haven’t the heart for 
that, MacVeagh, you could send him 
away. Have him called to Wash- 
ington. That’d be a break for him, 
too.” 

“But it wouldn’t solve the prob- 
lem, would it, MacVeagh? She still 
wouldn’t love you.” 

“You don’t believe it. do you. 
MacV eagh ? She can't help not lov- 
ing you, but she wouldn’t deceive 
you. You trust her, don't you?" 

“MacVeagh.” 

It was some seconds before John 
MacVeagh realized that this last 
voice was not also inside his head. 
He looked up to see Phil Rogers, 
the perfect profile as hvperpale as 
it had been on the night of his aunt’s 
murder. His white hand held an 
automatic. 

"Yes?” MacVeagh asked casu- 
ally. He tensed his body and calcu- 
lated positions and distances with 
his eyes, while he wondered furi- 
ously what this meant. 

“MacYeagh, I’m going to send 
you to meet God.” 

“My. Fancy talk." It was diffi- 
cult. MacVeagh was hemmed in by 
files and a table of reference books. 
It would be next to impossible to 
move before Phil Rogers could jerk 
his right index finger. "And just 
why, Phil, should you take this job 
on yourself?” 

“Maybe I should say because you 
stole Laura, and now she's making 
a fool of herself — and you — with 
that Johansen. I wanted her. I’d 



WE PRINT THE TRUTH 



165 



have had her, too. H. A. and I had 
it all fixed up.” 

It wasn’t worth explaining that 
MacVeagh and Rogers had equally 
little just claim on Laura. “Noble,” 
said MacVeagh. "All for love. 
You’d let them stretch your neck 
for love, too?” 

Rogers laughed. "You know me, 
huh. MacVeagh?” 

Play for time, that was the only 
way. "I know you enough to think 
there’s a stronger motive — stronger 
for you.” 

“You’re right there is. And 
you’re going to hear it before you 
go. Go to meet God. Wonder what 
He’ll think — of meeting another 
god.” 

This was more startling than the 
automatic. “What do you mean by 
that. Phil?” 

‘‘I’ve heard Luke Sellers talking 
when he was drunk. About General 
Wigginsby and the butler’s confes- 
sion. Everybody thought he was 
babbling. But I got it. I don’t 
know how it works, but your paper 
prints true. What you print hap- 
pens.” 

MacVeagh laughed. “Nonsense. 
Listen to Luke? You must’ve been 
tight yourself, Phil. Go home.” 

“Uh-uli.” Rogers shook his head, 
but his hand didn't move. “That 
explains it all. All you’ve done to 
me. You took Laura. You shoved 
that softy Johansen into the general 
manager’s job I should have had. 
You got that sniveling, weak-kneed 
labor agreement through. You — 
MacVeagh, I think you ended the 
war !” 

166 



“And you’d hold that against 
me?” 

"Yes. We were doing swell. 
Now with retooling, new products, 
trying to crash new markets, every- 
thing uncertain — I inherited my 
aunt’s interest in the company. 
MacVeagh, you did me out of two- 
three years of profits.” 

“Do you think anybody 'd believe 
this wild yam of yours, Phil?” 
“No. I don’t. I was tight, just 
tight enough so things made sense. 
I wouldn’t swallow it sober myself. 
But I know it’s true, and that’s why 
I've got to kill you, MacVeagh.” 
His voice rose to a loud, almost so- 
prano cry. 

The white hand was very steady". 
MacVeagh moved his body" slowly 
to one side and watched the nose of 
the automatic hold its point on him. 
Then, with the fastest, sharpest 
movement he’d ever attained in his 
life, he thrust his chair crashing 
back and dropped doubled into the 
knee hole of his desk. The motion 
was just in time. He heard a bullet 
thud into the plaster of the wall di- 
rectly behind where he’d been sit- 
ting. 

His plans had been unshaped. It 
was simply that the desk seemed the 
only armor visible at the moment. 
And to fire directly into this knee 
hole would mean coming around 
and up close where he might possi- 
bly grab at Rogers’ legs. The wood 
between him and Rogers now should 
be thick enough to — 

He heard a bullet plunk into that 
wood. Then he heard it go past his 
ear and bury itself in more wood. 

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 



His guess was wrong. He could be 
shot in here. This bullet had gone 
past him as knives go past the boy 
in the Indian basket trick. But Phil 
Rogers was not a magician slipping 
knives into safe places, and no 
amount of contortion could save 
MacVeagh from eventually meeting 
one of those bullets. 

He heard scuffling noises. Then 
he heard a thud that was that of a 
body, not a bullet, and with it an- 
other shot. 

There was silence for a minute. 
Then a voice said, “MacVeagh? 
What’s become of you?" 

MacVeagh crawled out from un- 
der the desk. “Undignified pos- 
ture.” he said, “but what would you 
do if you were hemmed in and this 
maniac started — Is he hurt?” 



MacVeagh turned to him and said, 
“Get out. I don’t care what you 
do or how you explain that bullet 
wound. I'm not bringing any 
charges. Get out.” 

Rogers glared at them both. “I’ll 
settle with you. MacVeagh. You, 
too, Johansen.” 

“Uh-uh. You're having a nerv- 
ous breakdown. You’re going to a 
sanitarium for a while. When you 
come out you’ll feel fine.” 

“That’s what you say.” 

“Get out.” MacVeagh repeated. 
And as Rogers left, he jotted down 
a note to print the sanitarium trip 
and the necessary follow-ups on con- 
valescence. 

Without a word he handed a bot- 
tle to Johansen, then drank from it 
himself. “Thanks,” he said. “I 



It took a while for exchange of 
information, MacVeagh giving a 
much-censored version which made 
it seem that Phil Rogers was suffer- 
ing a motiveless breakdown of some 
sort, the other telling how he’d been 
waiting outside, heard Phil’s loud 
denunciations — though not their 
words — and then the shots, and de- 
cided to intervene. Rogers was so 
intent on his victim that attack from 
behind was a snap. The last shot 
had gone into Rogers’ own left 
shoulder as they struggled. Nothing 
serious. 

“Don't know how T can ever 
thank you, Johansen," said John 
MacVeagh. 

“Any time," said his wife's lover. 
“It’s a pleasure." 

Rogers was on his feet again now. 



before 

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167 



can’t say more than that.” 

The tall blond man smiled. “I 
won’t ask questions. I've had run- 
ins with Rogers myself. The boss’ 
sister's nephew — But to. tell you 
the truth, John, I'm sorry I saved 
your life.” 

MacVeagh stiffened. “You've 
still got his gun,” he suggested hu- 
morlessly. 

“I don't want you to lose your 
life. But I’m sorry I saved it. Be- 
cause it makes what I have to say 
so much harder.” 

MacVeagh sat on the edge of his 
desk. "Go on.” 

“Cold, like this? I don’t know 
how I thought I was going to man- 
age to say this — I never expected 
this kind of a build-up — 

“All right, John, this is it : 

“I told you once that Laura had 
better be happy. Well, she isn’t. 
I've been seeing her. Probably you, 
know that. I haven't tried to sneak 
about it. She doesn't love y'ou, 
John. She won’t say it, but I think 
she still loves me. And if I can 
make her happy. I’m warning you, 
I’ll take her away from you.” 
MacVeagh said nothing. 

Johansen went on hesitantly. "I 
know what it would mean. A scan- 
dal that would make Laura a fallen 
woman in the eyes of all Grover. 
A fight with H. A. that would end 
my job here and pretty much kill my 
chances in general. I’ll make it 
clear to Laura — and I think she'll be 
as willing to risk it as I am. 

“But I’m giving you your chance. 
If you can make her love you, make 
her happy, all right. It’s Laura that 

168 



counts. But if in another month 
there's still that haunted emptiness 
in her eyes — well, John, then it’s up 
to me.” 

The two men stood facing each 
other for a moment. There were 
no more words. There was no pos- 
sibility of words. Ingve Johansen 
turned and left the room. 

If yon can make her love you — 
Was this the limit to the power of 
the god of the Sentinel? You can't 
print EDITOR’S WIFE LOVES 
HIM. You can't — or can you? 

Numbly MacVeagh groped his 
way to the typewriter. His fingers 
fumbled out words. 

“Women have a double task in this 
new peace time,” Mrs. John MacVeagh, 
president of the Volunteer Women 
Workers, stated when interviewed yes- 
terday. 

“Like all other citizens, women must 
take part in the tasks of reconstruction,” 
said the lovely Mrs. MacVeagh, nee 
Laura Hitchcock. “But woman’s prime 
job in reconstruction is assuring happi- 
ness in the home. A man’s usefulness to 
society must depend largely on the love 
of his wife. I feel that I am doing good 
work here with the VWW, but I con- 
sider the fact that I love my husband is 
my most important contribution to Grov- 
er’s welfare.” 

MacVeagh sat back and looked at 
it. His head ached and his mouth 
tasted foul. Neither a pipe nor a 
drink helped. He reread what he'd 
written. Was this the act of a god 
— or of a louse? 

But it had to be. He knew l^aura 
well enough to know that she’d 
never stand up under the scandal 
and ostracism that Johansen pro- 
posed, no matter how eagerly she 

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 



might think she welcomed them. As 
Ingve had said, it’s Laura that 
counts. 

It is so easy to find the most flat- 
tering motives for oneself. 

He wrote a short item announc- 
ing I. L. Johansen’s resignation as 
manager of the Hitchcock plant and 
congratulating him on his appoint- 
ment to the planning board of the 
new OPR, the Office of Peace-time 
Reconstruction. He was typing the 
notice of Philip Rogers’ departure 
for a sanitarium, phrased with eu- 
phemistic clarity, when Luke Sellers 
came back. 

Luke had been gone an hour. 
Plenty had happened here in that 
hour, but more where Luke Sellers 
had been. The old printer had aged 
a seeming ten years. 

He kept twitching at his little 
scraggle of white beard, and his eyes 
didn’t focus anywhere. His lips at 
first had no power to shape words. 
They twisted hopefully, but what 
came through them was just sound. 

“Molly — ” Luke said at last. 

John MacVeagh stood up sharply. 
“What is it? What’s wrong?” 

“Molly — Told you I was wor- 
ried about her — ” 

“She — No! She hasn’t! She 
couldn’t !” 

“Iodine. Gulped it down. Messy 
damned way. Doc Quillan hasn't 
much hope — ” 

“But why? Why?” 

“She can't talk. Vocal cords — 
It eats, that iodine — Keeps trying 
to say something. I think it’s — 
Want to come?” 

MacVeagh thought lie understood 



a little. He saw things he should 
have seen before. How Molly felt 
about him. How, like Johansen 
with Laura, she could tolerate his 
marriage if he was happy, but when 
that marriage was breaking up and 
her loss became a pointless farce — - 

“Coming, Johnny?” Luke Sellers 
repeated, 

“No,” said MacVeagh. “I've got 
to work. Molly’d want me to. And 
she'll pull through all right, Luke. 
You’ll read about it in the Sentinel.” 

It was the first time that this god 
had exercised the power of life and 
death. 

VIII. 

The next morning Laura looked 
lovelier than ever at breakfast as 
she glanced up from the paper and 
asked, “Did you like my interview?” 

MacVeagh reached a hand across 
the table and touched hers. “What 
do you think?” 

“I’m proud,” she said. “Proud to 
see it there in print. More coffee?” 

“Thanks.” 

She rose and filled his cup at the 
silver urn. “Isn’t it nice to have all 
the coffee we want again?" As she 
set the cup back at his place, she 
leaned over and kissed him. It was 
a light, tender kiss, and the first she 
had ever given him unprompted. 
He caught her hand and held it for 
a moment. 

“Don’t stay too late at the office 
tonight, dear,” she said softly, 

"Most amazing recovery I ever 
saw,” Doc Quillan mumbled. “Take 
a while for the throat tissues to heal, 



WE PRINT THE TRUTH 



160 



b'ut she’ll be back at work in no 
time. Damned near tempted to call 
it a miracle, MacVeagh.” 

“I guess this OPR appointment 
settles my part o£ what we were 
talking about,” Ingve Johansen said 
over the phone. “It’s a grand break 
for me — fine work that I’m anxious 
to do. So I won’t be around, but 
remember — I may come back.” 

“Gather Phil made a fool of him- 
self last night,” said H. A. Hitch- 
cock, “Don’t worry. Shan’t hap- 
pen again. Strain, overwork — 
He’ll be all right after a rest.” 

Father Byrne dropped in that 
morning, happily flourishing a lib- 
eral journal which had nominated 
Grover as the nation's model town 
for labor relations. 

Chief Hanby dropped in out of 
pure boredom. The Grover crime 
rate had become so minute that he 
feared his occupation was all but 
gone. “The crooks are all faded,” 
he said. “ ‘The strangers shall fade 
away, and. be afraid out of their close 
places.’ Psalms, .eighteen, forty- 
five. Grover’s the Lord’s town 
now.” 

John MacVeagh stood alone in his 
office, hearing the whir of presses 
and the rushing of feet outside. 
This was his, the greatest tool of 
good in the world’s history. 

“And God saw everything that he 
had made, and, behold, it was very 
good.” Genesis, as Chief Hanby 
would say, one, thirty-one. 

170 



He did not stay too late at the 
office that night. 

John MacVeagh reached over to 
the night table for a cigarette. There 
are times when even a confirmed 
pipe smoker uses them. In the glow 
of the match he saw Laura’s face, 
relaxed and perfect. 

“Want- one?” 

“No thanks, dear.” 

He took in a deep breath of smoke 
and let it out slowly. “Do you 
love me?” he asked gently. 

“What do you think?” She 
moved closer and laid her head on 
his shoulder. 

He felt a stirring of discontent, of 
compunction. “But I — Do you 
really love me? Not just because of 
that interview — what I made you 
say, but — ” 

Laura laughed. “You didn’t make 
me say it. Except that your being 
you is what makes me love you, and 
that’s what made me say it. Of 
course I love you. I know I’ve 
been frightfully slow realizing it, but 
now — ” 

“I want you to love me. I want 
you realty to love me, of your own 
self—” 

But even as he spoke, he realized 
the hopelessness of his longing. 
That could never be now. He had 
forcibly made her into a thing that 
loved him, and that “love” was no 
more like true love than the affec- 
tion of a female robot or — he shud- 
dered a little — the attentions of the 
moronic ghost that brought love to 
Professor Guildea. 

He could not even revoke this 

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 



forced love, unless by figuring some 
means of printing that she did not 
love him. And that then would be 
true, and forbid all possibility of the 
real love that she might eventually 
have felt for him. 

He was trapped. His power and 
his ingenuity had made him the only 
man on earth who had not the slight- 
est chance of ever feeling the true, 
unfeigned, unforced love of his wife. 



It was this that brought it all into 
focus. MacVeagh understood now 
the nagging discontent that had been 
gnawing at him. He looked at ev- 
erything that he had made, and be- 
hold, he felt only annoyance and im- 
patience. 

He tried to phrase it once or 
twice : 

“Jake, supposing you knew it was 
only a trick, this change in your be- 
liefs. It was just a hoax, a bad 
practical joke played on you.” 
“How could it be ? I used to have 
crazy ideas. I used to think I was 
too smart to believe. Now I know 
different. That's no joke.” 

“Father Byrne, do you think this 
labor agreement could have been 
reached without outside pressure? 
That men and management really 
could have got together like this?” 
“They did, didn’t they, John? I 
don't understand what you mean 
about outside pressure — unless." the 
priest added, smiling, “you think my 
prayers were a form of undue influ- 
ence?” 

MacVeagh did not try to explain 
what god had answered those pray- 
ers. Even if you could persuade 



people of the actual state of things, 
that he and the Sentinel had made 
them what they were, the truth 
would remain the truth. 

He realized that when Molly 
came back to the office. For Molly 
knew the whole story and under- 
stood. She understood too well. 
Fler first words when they were 
alone were, “Boss, I'm really dead, 
aren’t I ?” 

He tried to pretend not to under- 
stand. He tried to bluff through it, 
pass it off as nothing. But she was 
too sure. She insisted, “I died that 
night.” Her voice was a rough 
croak. He had forgotten to specify 
a miraculous recovery of the iodine- 
eaten vocal cords. 

At last he nodded, without a 
word. 

“I suppose I ought to thank you, 
boss. I don’t know if I do — I 
guess I do, though. Laura came to 
see me in the hospital and talked. 
If she loves you, you’re happy. And 
if you’re happy, boss, life’s worth 
living.” 

“Happy— ” Then his words be- 
gan to tumble out. Molly was the 
first person, the only person that he 
could talk to about his new discov- 
ery: the drawback of omnipotence. 

“You see,” he tried to make it 
clear, “truth has a meaning, a value, 
only because it's outside of us. It’s 
something outside that’s real and 
valid, that we can reckon against. 
When you make the truth yourself 
it doesn’t have any more meaning. 
It doesn’t feel like truth. It’s no 
truer than an author’s characters 
are to him. Less so, maybe; somc- 



WE PRINT THE TRUTH 



171 



times they can rebel and lead their 
own lives. But nothing here in Gro- 
ver can rebel, or in the world either. 
But it’s worst here. I don’t know 
people any more.” 

“Especially me,” said Molly. 

He touched her shoulder gently. 
“One thing I didn’t make up, Molly. 
That’s your friendship for me. I’m 
grateful for that.” 

"Thanks, boss.” Her voice was 
even rougher. “Then take some ad- 
vice from me. Get out of Grover 
for a while. Let your mind get 
straightened out. See new people 
that you’ve never done anything to 
except end the war for them. Take 
a vacation.” 

“I can’t. The paper’s such a re- 
sponsibility that — ” 

“Nobody but me knows about it, 
and I promise to be good. If you’re 
away, it'll run just like any other 
paper. Go on, boss.” 

“Maybe you’re right. I’ll try it, 
Molly. But one thing.” 

•“Yes, boss?” 

“Remember: this has got to be 
the best proofread paper in the 
world.” 

Molly nodded and almost smiled. 

For an hour after leaving Grover, 
John MacYeagh felt jittery. He 
ought to be back at his desk. He 
ought to be making sure that the 
Senate didn't adopt the Smith 
amendment, that the Army of Occu- 
pation in Germany effectively 
quashed that Hohenzollern Royalist 
putsch, that nothing serious came of 
Mr. Hasenberg’s accident at the 
plant — 

172 



Then the jitters left him, and he 
thought, "Let them make out by 
themselves. They did once.” 

Fie spent the night at the Motel 
in Proutyville and enjoyed the 
soundest sleep he had known in 
months. In the morning he went 
next door to chat with the pjump 
garage proprietor, who’d been good 
company on other trips. 

Fie found a woman there, who 
answered his “Where’s Ike?” with 
"Ain’t you heard? He died last 
week. Too much beer, I guess.” 
“But Ike lived on beer.” 

“Sure, only he used to drink 
only as much as he could afford. 
Then for a while seems like there 
wasn't no limit to how much he 
had, and last week he comes down 
with this stroke. I’m his daughter- 
in-law ; I'm keeping the joint going. 
Not that there’s any business in 
times like these.” 

“What do you mean, in times 
like these?” 

“Mister, where you been ? Don't 
you know there’s a war on?” 
“No,” said John MacYeagh daz- 
edly. The daughter-in-law looked 
after him, not believing her ears. 

MacVeagh hardly believed his, 
either. Not until he reached the 
metropolis of Zenith was he fully 
convinced. He studied newspapers 
there, talked with soldiers and de- 
fense workers. 

There was no doubt at all. The 
world was at war. 

He guessed the answer roughly. 
Something about relative truths and 
spheres of influence. He could 

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 



work it out clearly later. 

His head was spinning - as he got 
back to his parked car. There was 
a stocky young man in a plain gray 
suit standing beside it. staring at the 
name plate GROVER attached to 
the license. 

As MacVeagh started to get in. 
the young tnan accosted him. “You 
from Grover, Mac?” 

MacVeagh nodded automatically, 
and the man slipped into the seat 
beside him. “We've got to have a 
talk. Mac. A long talk.” 

“And who are you?” 

“Kruger. F. B. I.” He flashed 
a card. “The Bureau is interested 
in Grover.” 

“Look,” said MacVeagh, “I've 
got an appointment at the Zenith 
BiUletin in five minutes. AEter that, 



I’m at your disposal. You can 
come along,” he added as the G-man 
hesitated. 

“O. K., Mac.. Start thinking up 
answers.” 

Downtown traffic in Zenith was 
still fairly heavy, even in wartime. 
Pedestrian traffic was terrific. Mac- 
Veagh pulled his car up in the yel- 
low zone in front of the Bulletin 
Building. He opened his door and 
stepped out. Kruger did the same. 
Then in an instant MacVeagh was 
hack in the driver’s seat and the car 
was pulling away. 

He had the breaks with him. A 
hole opened up in the traffic just 
long enough to insure his getaway. 
He knew there were too many by- 
standers for Kruger to risk a shot. 
Two blocks away he deliberately 




WE PRINT THE TROTH 



lit 



stalled the car in the middle of an 
intersection. In the confusion of 
the resulting pile-up he managed to 
slip away unnoticed. 

The car had to be abandoned, 
anyway. Where could he get gas 
for it with no ration coupons? The 
important thing was to get away 
with his skin. 

For he had realized in an instant 
that one of Kruger’s first questions 
would be, "Where’s your draft 
card, Mac?’’ And whatever steps 
he had to take to solve the magnifi- 
cent confusion which his godhead 
had created, he could take none of 
them in Federal prison as a draft 
evader. 

Molly stared at the tramp who 
had forced his way into the Sentinel 
office. “Well,” she growled, “what 
do you want?” 

“Molly, don’t you know me?” 

“Boss'!” 

The huskies on either side of him 
reluctantly relaxed their grips. “You 
can go, boys,” she said. They went, 
in frowning dumbness. 

MacVeagh spoke rapidly. “I 
can’t tell it all to you now, Molly. 
It’s too long. You won’t believe it, 
but I’ve had the Feds on my tail. 
That’s why this choice costume, 
mostly filth. The rods were the 
only safe route to Grover. And 
you thought I should take a vaca- 
tion — ” 

“But why — ” 

“Listen, Molly. I’ve made a 
world of truth. All right. But 
that truth holds good only where 
the Sentinel dominates. There’s an 



imaginary outside to go with it, 
an outside that sends me dispatches 
based on my own statements, that 
maintains banking relations with 
our banks, that feeds peacetime pro- 
grams to our radios, and so on, but 
it’s a false outside, a world of If. 
The true outside is what it would 
be without me: a world at war.” 
For a moment Molly gasped 
speechlessly. Then she said, “Mr. 
Johansen !” 

“What about him?” 

“You sent him to the Office of 
Peace-time Reconstruction. That’s 
in your world of If. What’s be- 
come of him?” 

"I never thought of that one — 
But there are problems enough. It 
isn’t fair to the people here to make 
them live in an unreal world, even 
if it’s better than the real one. Man 
isn’t man all by himself. Man is in 
and of his time and the rest of man- 
kind. If he’s false to his time, he’s 
false to himself. Grover's going to 
rejoin the world.” 

"But how, boss? Are you going 
to have to start the war all over?” 
“I never stopped it except in our 
pretty dream world. But I’m going 
to do more than that. I’m going 
to reveal the whole fake — to call it 
all a fake in print.” 

“Boss !” Molly gasped. “You . . . 
you realize this is suicide? No- 
body’ll ever read the Sentinel again. 
And suicide,” she added with grim 
personal humor, “isn’t anything I'd 
recommend.” 

“I don’t count beside Grover. I 
don’t count beside men. ‘For God,’ ” 

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 



he quoted wryly, “ ‘so loved the 
world — ’ ” 

"This is it," said John MacVeagh 
much later. 

That edition of the Sentinel had 
been prepared by a staff of three. 
The targe, fine new staff of the large, 
fine new Sentinel had frankly de- 
cided that its proprietor was mad 
or drunk or both. Storming in 
dressed like a bum and giving the 
craziest orders. There had been a 
mass meeting and a mass refusal to 
have anything to do with the pro- 
posed all-is-lies edition. 

Luke Sellers had filled the breach 
again. He read the copy and 
nodded. “You never talked much, 
Johnny, but I had it figured pretty 
much like this. I was in at the 
start, so I guess it’s right. I ought 
to be in at the end." 

This was the end now. This 
minute a two-sheet edition, its front 
page one huge headline and its in- 
side pages containing nothing but 
MacVeagh’s confession in large 
type, was set up and ready to run. 

The confession told little. Mac- 
Veagh could not expect to make 
anyone believe in Whalen Smith 
and wishes and variable truths. It 
read simply like the story of a 
colossal and unparalleled hoax. 

“There won't be enough rails in 
town for the guys that'll want to 
run you out on one, Johnny," Luke 
Sellers warned. 

“I'm taking the chance. Go 
ahead : print it.” 

The presses clanked- 



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174 



WE PRINT THE TRUTH 




There was a mement of complete 
chaos. 

Somewhere in that chaos a part 
of MacVeagh's mind was thinking, 
“This was what had to happen. 
You gave your wish an impossible 
problem : to print that its truth is 
not truth. Like the old logical rid- 
dle about how you cannot say, ‘I 
am lying.' If you are, it’s the 
truth, and so you’re not. Same in 
reverse. And when the wish meets 
the impossible — ” 

The wish gave up. It ceased to 
be. And in the timeless eternity 
where all magic exists, it ceased 
ever to have been. 

IX. 



even when most they rebel. . ou 
do not love' your chessmen. Man 
must work out his own salvation ; 
salvation on a silver platter is mean- 
ingless.” 

John MacVeagh stirred restlessly. 
This idea seemed so familiar. Not 
from hearing Father Byrne expound 
it before, but as though he had 
worked it out for himself, some- 
time, in a very intimate application. 

“But if there is a God — ” Jake 
went on undisturbed. 

MacVeagh caught Ingve Johan- 
sen’s eye and grinned. He was glad 
Johansen had joined the cracker- 
barrel club. Glad, too, that Johan- 
sen’s marriage with Laura Hitch- 
cock was working so well. 



“All right then, tell me this: If 
God can do anything — ” Jake Wil- 
lis cleared his throat and paused, 
preparatory to delivering the real 
clincher. 

The old man with the scraggly 
beard snorted and took another shot 
- of applejack. “Why doesn’t He 
end the war? I’m getting tired of 

a that, Jake. I wish you’d go back 
to the weight He can’t lift. Father's 
explained this one before, and I’m 
willing to admit he makes a good 
case.” 

“I don’- see it,” said Jake stub- 



ei Byrne sighed. “Because 
must have free will. If men 
re mere pawns that were pushed 
round by God, their acts would 
nave no merit in them. They would 
be unworthy to be the children of 
God, Your own children you love 



The man with the tired face was 
playing with the black Scottie and 
trying to think of nothing at all. 
When he heard footsteps, he looked 
up sharply. The tiredness was au- 
tomatically wiped from his face by 
a grin, which faded as he saw a 
stranger. “How did you get in 
here?” he demanded. 

The stranger was an old man 
with a beaked nose. In the dim 
light it was hard to tell whether or 
not he wore a beard. He said, “I’ve 
been working for you.” 

The man with the Scottie looked 
at the defense-worker’s identifica- 
tion card which said 

WHALING, SMITH 

Fie resumed the grin. “Glad to 
see you. Fine work they’ve been 
turning out at your plant. You're 
a delegate to me?” 



176 



ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 



“Sort of. But just for me, You 
see. I’m quitting.” 

‘‘You can’t. Your job's frozen.” 
“I know. But that don’t count. 
Not for me. But it's this way: 
Since the army took over the plant, 
looks like you're my employer. 
Right?” 

The man seemed puzzled as he 
fitted a cigarette into a long holder. 
“I guess so. Smoke?” 

.‘‘No. thanks. Then if you’re my 
employer, you've been a good one. 
You’ve got a wish coming to you.” 
The man with the holder peered 
at the other. It was hard to make 
him out. And he’d come in so si- 
lently, presumably through the 
guards. 

The grin was crooked as he said, 
“I don't think you’re even here. 
And since you aren't, there's no 
harm in playing the game. A 
wish — ” He looked at the globe 
on the table and at the dispatches 
beside it. “Yes," he said finally, 
“I have a wish — ” 

John MacVeagh paused beside 
the gypsy's booth at the Victory 
Garden Fair. “Want to have your 
fortune told. Molly?” 

Molly shuddered. “Maybe I’m 
silly. But ever since I was a child 
I’ve been scared of anything like 
magic. There’s always a catch.” 

The Scottie had been trying to 
gather courage to bark at the 
stranger. Now he succeeded. “Be 
quiet, Falla.” his owner ordered. 
“Yes, Whaling, I wish—” 

THE END. 





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WE PRINT THE TRUTH 



177 



Master Chemist 

Continued front page 109 

specially evolved colonies can pro- 
duce. 

Chemistry has made enormous 
advances — but it must, as yet, con- 
fine itself to working with reason- 
ably stable systems of molecules. 
Life is stable only when it ceases to 
live; living cells are inherently un- 
stable, dynamic equilibria, capable 
of producing vastly more complex, 
and hence more precise!}' special- 
ized, substances. 

It was a plant that invented the 
chemical compound so inordinately 
specialized that it attacked one par- 
ticular small bundle of nerve fibers 
out of all the billions of nerve cells 
in the human body. Digitalin, with 
absolute pin-point selectivity, re- 
acts on the specific protoplasm of a 
special little nerve bundle regulat- 
ing the progression of pulse waves 
'own the heart muscle — the Bun- 
dle of His. 

It was the cinchona tree that 
produced quinine, a chemical agent 
sufficiently specific that, in a con- 
centration harmless to man, it is a 
deadly poison to the malaria parasite. 

The penicilliutn mold has now 
been made to yield another toxin 
’ '*• kills pathogenic microorgan- 
when present in a concentra- 
n harmless to man. The sulfa 
.rugs have the same powers — but 
ire not as delicately specific; the 
curative concentrations of the sulfa 
drugs are decidedly toxic to ' the 

THE 



patient, commonly producing a feel- 
ing of exhaustion, and occasionally 
producing reactions so violent the 
drug nuist.be discontinued. 

The real business of chemo- 
therapy is to find chemical agents so 
highly specialized that they will, like 
quinine and penicillin, prove fatal 
to a selected microorganism victim, 
while leaving the human patient 
unharmed. To date, the only man- 
made curative chemical agents, as 
distinct from palliatives that help 
make the patient more comfortable 
while his own body produces the 
cure, are the salvarsan arsenicals, 
atabrine. and the sulfa drugs. 

Atabrine is a second-line substi- 
tute for the biochemical product 
quinine, and a biochemical product 
has now been found superior to 
the sulfa drugs. It may be that 
the future will find chemists and 
mechanical equipment producing 
the great curative drugs — but my 
bets are down on a real program 
of microbiochemical research. It 
takes generations to breed trees to 
produce a desired substance, years 
to produce a new line of annual 
plants like the digitalin-bearing 
foxglove, but new strains of micro- 
organisms can be bred in weeks. 
Life-processes are possible only 
because of highly specialized, deli- 
cately balanced enzymes and fer- 
ments ; they are the obvious source 
for precisely the minutely specialized 
poisons chemo-therapy demands. 
And they can produce in quantity 
economically, if the proper strains 
are bred. 

END. 



178 



ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 



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